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The 
Ozark Mountain Region 

OF Missouri and Arkansas 



AS IT APPEARS 
ALONG THE LINE OF THE 



Kansas City Southern Railway 




Published By 

INDUSTRIAL AND IMMIGRATION DEPARTMENT 

KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI. 



^ 



®^rV\C 




,i7> 



THE OZARK REGION 



The Ozark Mountain Region of 
Missouri and Arkansas 



The Ozark Mountain Region is a vast 
plateau, covering a large part of Missouri, 
south of the Missouri River, extending south 
within one hundred miles of Red River, be- 
ing divided into two parts by the Arkansas 
River. This plateau is traversed by many 
fairly large rivers and several hundred beau- 
tiful mountain streams, tributaries of the 
Missouri, Mississippi, Arkansas and Red 
rivers. In some localities are evidences of 
distinct volcanic disturbances, but in gen- 
eral the Ozark Uplift or Plateau is a great 
table land cut into smaller comparatively 
level areas, into hills in places and magnifi- 
cent fertile valleys in others. Its altitude 
insures its healthfulness and its natural 
water supply is the finest on the American 
continent. Its general trend is from north- 
east to southwest, having its greatest width 
near the Missouri and Arkansas state line, 
tapering off southwesterly into Oklahoma 
and northerly to the Missouri River several 
spurs running earsterly to the Mississippi 
River. The altitudes range from 1,000 to 
1,500 feet except in southwestern Arkansas 
where altitudes of 2,000 to 2,500 feet are 
reached. Along its western slope in southern 
Missouri and western Arkansas it is tra- 
versed by the Kansas City Southern Railway ^^ 
and is crossed in all directions by other 
railways. The St. Louis, Iron Mountain and 
Southern Railway runs along the eastern 
edge of this plateau. 

Almost the entire area, except where 
cleared for cultivation, is wooded and there 
is considerable diversity in the soils. It is 
well adapted to general farming operations 
and the profitable raising of live stock, but 
much of the more elevated land is admirably 
suited to the commercial production of fine 
fruits, berries, truck and cannery stock. The 
appl3, in southwestern Missouri and north- 
western Arkansas, has reached the perfec- 
tion demanded in the fruit markets of the 
world. It has here reached the standard of 
quality demanded and is produced in com- 
mercial quantity, yielding annually a reve- 
nue of four to five million dollars. Enor- 
mous quantities of strawberries are pro- 
duced in the same locality and also yield a 
large revenue. The peach is abundantly pro- 



duced in this northern section of the Ozark 
Region, but is not as reliable in the yield 
as the apple, though some peaches in com- 
mercial quantity are produced every year. 

In the southern section of this Ozark 
Plateau is another fruit belt, in which the 
peach is the predominating tree fruit, 
though excellent apples are produced in 
Scott, Polk and the northern part of Sevier 
counties, which have the greatest altitudes, 
1,200 to 2,200 feet. The winter apples do 
the best in the highest elevations, but sev- 
eral varieties of the summer and early fall 
apples yield good fruit and form a source of 
considerable revenue. The peach acreage 
is between ten and fifteen thousand acres 
and the yield more reliable than in any 
other part of Arkansas. Strawberries, 
blackberries and other small fruits are 
abundantly produced and reach the north- 
ern markets very early in the season. 

Most of the country roads in the Ozark 
region are naturally good, and it is prac- 
ticable to go almost anywhere, even in bad 
weather. While good in most places for 
ordinary traffic, in places they lack the per- 
fection required for automobile travel. It 
was readily recognized that a country so 
rich in health and pleasure resorts, in scen- 
ic attractions and local traffic is at a disad- 
vantage if it has not the best roads that 
human ingenuity could construct. It was 
plain enough that the various health and 
pleasure resorts should be connected by 
good roads; that the fruit, berry and poul- 
try raiser should be enabled to market his 
products more easily, and, if the roads were 
good throughout, long automobile tours 
could be made from the great cities with 
comfort. A movement was begun last j'ear 
in Benton and Washington counties in north- 
western Arkansas to begin construction of 
a great smooth turnpike ninety miles in 
length, to connect the towns of Monte Ne, 
Rogers, Bentonville, Centerton, Hiwasse, 
Southwest City, Grove, Gravette and Sulphur 
Springs, by straightening, widening and 
shortening the existing roads, building 
bridges and culverts, etc., and doing what- 
ever is necessary to secure a first-class road. 
The general interest awakened has gone far 



THE OZARK REGION 




SCENE IN Mcdonald county. 



beyond the original conception. Since then 
Joplin, Neosho and Kansas City have be- 
come interested, and Crawford and Sebas- 
tian counties, Arkansas, are moving for a 
turnpike to connect with the northwestern 
Arkansas road. The Oklahoma counties 
along the Kansas City Southern Railway 
have likewise joined the movement, which 
will eventually result in the construction of 
a broad, smooth turnpike extending from 
Kansas City to Fort Smith and Van Buren, 
with numerous equally good branch roads 
leading to all points worth visiting. Most 
of the county road funds are available for 
this work, and large sums are being raised 
by private subscription. The Kansas City- 
Joplin part of the road is practically as- 
sured, and from the Missouri line to Monte 
Ne the revenue for construction has been 
provided, and parts of the road have already 
been built. The Oklahoma system will con- 
nect with the Arkansas roads. All towns 
along the proposed highway are raising 
money for construction, improvement and 
bridge building. In two or three years an 
elaborate road system will have been com- 
pleted. 

The entire Ozark region is particularly 
well favored in the matter of marketing its 
products. The industrial population within 
easy reach, all consumers and not producers 
of farm products, is very large, and a splen- 
did home market is assured. On its north- 
western edge is an enormous coal field, vith 
Pittsburg, Kan., as the commercial center, 
from which about 75,000 people are supplied. 



Joplin, Mc, is a great manufacturing center, 
and is the banking point for a lead and zinc 
mining industry, the output of which is 
valued annually at from fourteen to sixteen 
million dollars, and in which over 100,000 
people are interested. Fort Smith is also 
an important manufacturing point, and is 
the commercial ceniter for another great coal 
field. Texarkana and Shreveport have great 
woodworking plants^ numerous factories of 
all kinds, and handle great quantities of cot- 
ton. Woodworking plants are found at most 
stations on the line, and for its length there 
is greater industrial activity along the Kan- 
sas City Southern Railway than on any other 
railway in the United States. 

Beyond the home demands for farm pro- 
duce is that of the larger cities like Kansas 
City and St. Louis, Mo.; Houston, Dallas and 
Fort Worth, Texas; Memphis, Tenn., and 
New Orleans, La., any of which caa be 
reached within twenty-four to thirty hours, 
and all of which afford a splendid market 
tor fruits, vegetables, poultry, eggs, etc. 

The counties of Newton and McDonald, in 
Missouri, and Benton and Washington coim- 
ties, in Arkansas, lie on the northwestern 
slope of the Ozark Plateau; south of the 
Arkansas River, on the southwestern slope 
are the counties of Scott, Polk and Sevier 
and along the western slope, the counties of 
Adair, Sequoyah, Le Flore and McCurtain, 
in Oklahoma, all except the last named be- 
ing traversed by the Kansas City Southern 
Railway. 



THE OZARK REGION 



Home Life in the Ozark Region 



"Half of the world does not know how 
the other half lives," and perhaps it would 
not make much difference if it did, because, 
in the main, the home life of the people is 
governed by its environments. Owing to 
fixed habits of thought, or inability to think, 
the environment appears to be the essential 
feature in the development of the individual. 
Mental inertia makes it diflBcult to adapt 
one's self to new conditions, and it requires 
a strong will to make a radical change, to 
remove one's self from one environment into 
another. The average resident of the city 
fits into his environment as does the peg 
to the hole bored for it. He cannot easily 
realize that he could fit in anywhere else. 
To the ordinary wage-earner, the ringing of 
the alarm clock before daylight, the break- 
fast bolted in haste, the long ride on a din- 
gy street car, the eight, ten or twelve hours' 
work in an ofiBce, factory or store, the rush 
for a midday lunch, the evening ride with 
the mob for home, the dodging of street 
cars, automobiles and vehicles, are a matter 
of course. Between his sleeping place and 
his working place are miles of streets, lined 
with tall buildings, which cut off the breeze 
and retain the heat; . thousands of pedes- 
trians of whom he may not know one in a 



thousand. Though he has lived in the city 
nearly all his life, he is virtually a stranger 
among strangers and could not name the 
people living in the same block. Of course, 
he has some diversions; he can read of a 
murder or two in his paper, see someone 
run over by an automobile, see a house 
afire, read the baseball bulletins, or about 
a millionaire's donation to a new college; 
or if he is not working overtime, occasion- 
ally go to the theater; or if he wants 1o 
commune with nature, go with the family 
to the city park, where several thousand 
others are likewise communing, and then 
fight for room on the street car on his re- 
turn home. Another pleasant diversion is 
to figure up the grocery bill, the meat bill, 
the gas bill, the rent bill, laundry bill, and 
guess for how much he has been done by 
the enterprising merchant on the next street 
corner, and wonder if anything will be left 
at the end of the month, and dreading also 
the possibilities should he fail to get on the 
pay roll for a few months. Eggs with a dis- 
tinct graveyard flavor, meat too tough to 
eat, stale vegetables, overripe fruit, butter 
strong enough to walk by itself, milk guar- 
anteed to murder an infant in forty-eight 
hours, lard and syrups of doubtful parentage, 




SPRINGS IN EDSON PARK, SULPHUR SPRINGS, ARK. 



THE OZARK REGION 




ELK RIVER, McDonald county, mo. 



and coffee and sugar which are always shy- 
several ounces to the pound, are no novel- 
ties to the resident in the city. He takes 
all this as a matter of course, and anything 
different would not look natural to him. 

The man in the Ozark region lives some- 
what differently and seems to get consid- 
erable solid comfort from his way of living. 
Mentally he is alert and physically he is 
more sound than the city man. His environ- 
ment is different from that of the city. Let 
us take a drive with him. We can leave 
the train almost anywhere, but say we drop 
off at any one of the fruit-shdpping stations. 
The country is hilly and even mountainous 
in places, but the elevations are not so stu- 
pendous as to exclude from view compara- 
tively large scopes of country. The land- 
scape is not hemmed in by continuous 
ranges of high mountains, but rather pre- 
sents a panorama of exquisite scenery as 
the journey proceeds. There is always 
something beyond the immediate range of 
vision that is more beautiful than the piece 
of road already traversed. In summer there 
is always visible in the distance the deep 
green of a timbered hillcrest, suggesting 
many scenic possibilities beyond. In spring 
the landscape is bedecked with wild flowers, 
the hillsides and valleys are resplendent 
with the dogwood, wild plum and crab blos- 
soms, and the blossoms of the hundreds of 
apple and peach orchards and strawberry 
patches, and in the damp and shady places 
are a profusion of ferns, violets, spring 
beauties, flowing wild onions, Virginia 
creeper, trumpet vines, etc., to say nothing 
of the watercress, mosses, lichens and ferns 
growing at the springs and water courses, 
and this profusion of flowers is not laid out 



in geometrical figures or surmounted with a 
sign board "keep off the grass," but is as 
good as Mother Nature made it. 

The gojod, hiard gravel road leads us 
through an enchanting country. Every few 
hundred yards we cross a spring branch or a 
brook rushing over a clean gravelly bed. 
Springs gush out of the hillsides everywhere 
and large streams with great deep pools full 
of bass, crappie and other game fish are not 
far away. Coveys of quail are started up a 
dozen times along the road, which generally 
is well shaded. Within three or four miles 
of town the farms are from ten to forty 
acres in extent and lie close together, the 
neighbors being within call of each other. 
Apple and peach orchards, berry patches, 
potato fields and vegetable gardens are 
much in evidence, and the washday linen 
can be readily seen by looking from one 
farm to another. The farms seem well 
populated, and besides the humans there 
are plenty of chickens, ducks, geese, turkeys 
and young pigs. The White Leghorns and 
Guinea hens seem to prefer the country 
road to green pastures, and make much ado 
when forced to get out of the way of the 
vehicle, and the ducks at the crossing of 
the next brook also have a lot of uncompli- 
mentary remarks to make. 

A few miles farther out the farms become 
larger. Fine cattle, horses and mules are 
feeding on the pastures, and near the bams 
are droves of Poland China, Duroc and Jer- 
sey Red hogs. Alfalfa patches are seen here 
and there, and great fields of corn, wheat, 
oats, millet, sorghum, together with small 
orchards for home use, are now the pre- 
vailing feature of the landscape. A turn 
into a cross-road brings us back among the 



THE OZARK REGION 



/ 



fruit growers, and a flock of youngsters 
just coming out of a neat schoolhouse re- 
minds us that it is getting near dinner time. 

We had traveled leisurely, and had been 
cordially greeted by every man we met on 
the road and on the farms. Several invita- 
tions to dinner were declined, but on the re- 
turn we accepted one from the owner of a 
twenty-acre farm. Both appetite and dinner 
were good, and the after-dinner conversa- 
tion naturally turned to the farm and its 
prospects, and said the owner thereof, who 
had not always been a farmer: 

"Here on my little farm I am it; no man 
tells me to come or to go, or has the right 
to find fault with my coming and going, and 
if one should have the temerity so to do, I 
can look him in the eye and tell him to go 
to. I can hold my job indefinitely. There 
will always be enough to eat and a place to 
sleep for me and my family. Some years I 
may not seriously increase my bank ac- 
count, but as we pay out no cash for chick- 
ens, eggs, milk, butter, fruits, vegetables or 
fuel, there will always be enough to sell of 
one kind of produce or another to pay the 
taxes, buy clothes and other things and 
take a trip somewhere when the year's work 
is ri"actically over. We buy but little of 
food in town, except flour, coffee, sugar, 
etc., and of non-perishable goods we buy 
enough at a time for cash to make the price 
a consideration. In our cellar and pantry 
we have four or five barrels of apples, half 
a dozen big crocks of apple butter, a keg of 
cider vinegar, several hundred jars of pre- 
served fruits, jellies and marmalades, cab- 
bages, carrots, potatoes, turnips, onions, 
pumpkins, squashes and bacon, pickled pork 
and hams enough to last us far into spring, 
and we always have available young chick- 
ens, eggs, milk, cream and butter. Fresh 
beef or mutton we can nearly always get by 
exchange. Ready money is good to have 
in the bank, but little of it is needed for 
e very-day expenses on the farm. Some- 
ihing can be produced and sold every month 
in the year. The specialist or exclusive 
grower of truck or fruit, or the exclusive 
poultry man, cannot do- it, but a first-class, 
all around farmer, who will grow grain and 
forage crops, raise hogs, sheep, cattle, 
horses and mules, grow vegetables and 
truck for the canneries, operate a dairy with 
good dairy stock, operate a poultry yard in 
an up-to-date way, have a good-sized straw- 
berry patch, and an apple and peach orchard 
in good condition, can do it. There are very 
few who possess all the virtues above allud- 
ed to, but this country is full of successful 
farmers and fruit growers, nevertheless. 
This country has something to sell every 



month in the year, but the commodities are 
not all furnished by one class of producers, 
though each does well in his specialty. 

"Building up a farm is not an easy job, nor 
for that matter, is any other undertaking 
which is successful. Land is cheap, yet it 
requires some money to buy it. The farm 
should have a good team, one or two milk 
cows, two or three sows, and must also be 
stocked with poultry, for all of which money 
is necessary. Lumber costs from $10.00 to 
$12.50 per thousand feet, and some money 
is needed for supplies until the farm pro- 
duces them. The rest is good hard work, 
with the satisfaction of knowing that you 
are working for yourself and family, and if 
there are any profits beyond living expenses, 
they are yours. There is usually timber 
enough to build the fences, stables, poultry 
houses, barns, corncribs, feed bins, etc., and 
the rest is elbow grease. On the farm work 
is money, is a good appetite and good diges- 
tion, good health, long life and a soul con- 
tent. The planning out of a campaign for 
the season on the farm becomes more inter- 




RUTI.Er>GES C-WK. KEK SPRINGS, MO. 



THE OZARK REGION 




COSSATOT RIVER, DE QUEEN, ARK. 



esting than the campaign for a presidential 
election, and there is more pleasure in 
watching the development of a setting of 
young chicks than there is in watching the 
hatching of the Chinese republic. The man 
on the farm finds after a time that he has 
an object in life, provided he is not afflicted 
with the 'get-rich-quick' spirit. His farm, 
stock, horses, cattle, poultry, are not longer 
objects, but become personal acquaintances, 
about whose individual welfare he is more 
or less concerned, not because they are 
worth so many dollars, but because he likes 
them, and the same is true of his trees, his 
growing cornstalks, berry or truck patches. 
His neighbors and he know every man, 
woman and child within a radius of ten 
miles, are similarly interested, but this need 
not lead to the conclusion that all conversa- 
tion between rural neighbors is 'shop talk.' 
Few of the average city dwellers' houses 
are so well supplied with the literature of 
the day as are the farm houses in a fruit 
and truck growing neighborhood, and it is 
easier to sell a gold brick any day in the 
city than it is in the country. The farmer 
has time to read and to think, and many 
of the city dwellers have neither. Sociailly, 
life is pleasant and in the country every- 
body knows everybody else, and lifelong 
friendships are soon made among congenial 
spirits, and intellectually the country stands 
as high as the city. The 'social doings' 
are not so conventional, and there is a cor- 
diality about a 'kaffee klatch,' church so- 
cial, 'hen convention' or neighbor's visit 
that is entirely lacking in the city, where 



you change neighbors every few months and 
never really become acquainted with them, 

"You can't help noticing the number of 
chickens you passed on the road. If you 
didn't, you will notice them about daylight, 
when every rooster within sixty miles, and 
each within hearing distance of the other, 
will let you know that he is among the liv- 
ing. The wirelesg telegraph is not in it 
with the rooster when it comes to announc- 
ing the arrival of a new day. Poultry and 
eggs form a very important item all the 
year around and contribute a goodly share of 
the year's income. On a small farm like 
mine the land must never be idle. The 
chickens, a few turkeys, the two cows and 
the pigs furnish much of the living, and 
our fruit trees, berry and truck patches do 
the rest. Every year there are some pigs 
to sell, eggs every month in the year, like- 
wise butter, and occasionally a calf. Our 
team, cows and two or three sows must have 
some pasturage, and some land must be 
allotted to produce their feed. Ten acres, 
expertly cultivated, will produce all the feed 
necessary to carry all the stock and poultry 
a full year, making it unnecessary to buy 
feed stuffs of any kind. Some crops can 
be followed with a second crop, and this 
is done whenever practicable, so as to keep 
the soil as much employed as possible, and 
iDcidentially to enrich it by rotation, so as to 
bring cow peas, peanuts, or some other 
legume on each acre. In our section an ap- 
ple orchard is a good thing, and farther 
south peaches do well. Between the apple 
rows, while the trees are too young to bear. 



THE OZARK REGION 



there is room for several acres of strawber- 
ries, and one or two or three acres should 
be grown, by all means. To extend the 
strawberry season, several varieties should 
be planted. The earliest profitable variety 
in this locality is the Mitchell. This should 
be followed up by the Klondyke and then 
the 'Aroma.' This is by far the best .all 
around berry in this country. It comprises 
about 95 per cent of all the plantations. For 
a small general farm the three named varie- 
ties would make the berry season last from 
April 25th to June 10th. Farther south this 
crop would come in earlier. The money yield 
in the last three or four years has averaged 
about $100 per acre, though hundreds of in- 
dividuals obtained $200 to $450 per acre for 
their berries. The dewberry, raspberry and 
blackberry can be planted to great advan- 
tage, and one grower at Siloam Springs has 
netted $300 per acre for five consecutive 
years. 

"The June apples, which follow the straw- 
berry crop, really ripen here in June. The 
choice varieties are the 'Red June,' 'Red 
Astrachan' and 'Early Harvest.' These al- 
ways bring the best prices and, coupled with 
early maturing peaches, like the 'Early 
Crawford' and 'Oliver,' will keep the farmer 
busy during June. If you have some sheep 
you can shear them about this time. The 
Elberta peach matures in July, running over 
into August. It does splendidly farther 



south and yields often enough here to be 
profitable. When we get a crop it is worth 
$100 to $200 an acre. The 'Maiden Blush,' 
'Bell Flower' and 'Oliver' come in about the 
same time and are good for $100 to $150 per 
acre. During August green corn can be 
marketed, and young poultry, hatched in 
March and April, can go to market as 'fry- 
ers' or 'broilers.' There are also some 
peaches to ship. After this come the 'Ben 
Davis,' 'Gano' and 'Jonathan' apples, which 
need some attention. The 'Mammoth Black 
Twig' and 'Arkansas Black' apples are har- 
vested in October. The average value of an 
apple crop is about $100 per acre, depending 
on variety, age of orchard, cultivation and 
market conditions. Money yields of $200 
and $300 per acre are not uncommon. 

"The wheat crop matures in September, 
and if you have any wheat the local mills 
will buy it, or wiW sell the flour for you. The 
evaporators and canneries will handle fruit 
in the same way. The canneries will con- 
tract in advance for sweet potatoes, toma- 
toes and buy much of your fruit. There is 
always an opportunity for a catch crop of 
one kind or another, say peanuts, cowpeas, 
etc., and here, where we have a fruit-grow- 
ers' association, we can easily produce e- 
nough of any commodity for entire carloads 
of fruit or berries, or mixed carloads of 
truck, potatoes, cantaloupes, etc., and buy 




FARM VIEW AT SULPHUR SPRINGS, ARK. 



10 



THE OZARK REGION 




SAGER CREEK, SIL.OAM SPRINGS, MO. 



our boxes, crates, baskets, cases, etc., in car 
loads at the lowest figures. 

"The great stand-by on the Ozark farm 
is the chicken, of whatever breed. It works 
all the year around. The hens lay well all 
winter where properly cared for, but begin 
in earnest about the middle of January and 
continue until they reach their best all 
through February, March and the spring 
months, and they lay well when egg prices 
are highest. A good bunch of pullets of the 
March and April hatch make splendid egg- 
laying machines in December, and from this 
district we ship eggs in carload lots. 

"It is well to have one or two specialties 
for money-makers on the farm, and berry- 
growing and poultry-raising, if the transpor- 
tation facilities are right, are the most prom- 
ising on a small acreage. As to poultry, any 
standard breed is good enough. White Lejg- 
horns, Plymouth Rocks, Langshans, Rhode 
Island Reds, Orpingtons and Wyandottes are 
all of good reputation in chickendom and all 
are heavy chickens, with good laying pro- 
pensities, which can be increased by proper 
handling. The White Leghorn, probably, 
lays the largest number of eggs when al- 
lowed to run at large, but in confinement 
other varieties will do equally well. The 
Rhode Island Red, a big breasted, heavy, 
haDdsome fowl, quick) in maturing and 
hardy, will outlay the White Leghorn and in 
the winter months when eggs bring the high- 
est prices. 

"There are several systems and methods 
for raising poultry, and the man interested 



should study them carefully as to net I'e- 
sults. Good common sense should indicate 
that poultry should be well housed in dry, 
clean quarters, that the henhouse should be 
regularly sprayed for mites and lice; that 
ample provision is made for air and sun- 
light and for dust baths; and that the feed- 
ing is done right, and fresh water is abun- 
dant. Counting one's chickens before they 
are hatched and figuring on poultry profits, 
to the uninitiated, belong to the same order 
of mathematics; yet there is an element of 
certainty that an intelligent poultry raiser 
can figure on and get pretty close to his 
prospective year's income from that source. 
Prices of poultry and eggs fluctuate, as do 
the prices of other foodstuffs, and the value 
estimate of today may not be good next 
week. Now as to profits: 

"Let us take for illustration a flock of 
120 hens as a beginning, 100 in the laying 
pens and 20 for breeding purposes. Your 100 
in the laying pens should average 12 dozen 
eggs a year, or a total of 1,200 dozens. At 
30 cents per dozen the income is $360. The 
20 in the breeding pens are your 'crack* 
layers, and should give you 175 eggs each, 
or 3,500. Of these you sell 125 dozen for 
$37.50. At least 2,000 of these eggs should 
be laid during the months of January, Feb- 
ruary, March, April and May, the incubat- 
ing season. They should be incubated. Say 
you hatch out 70 per cent, or 1,400 chicks, 
and succeed In maturing 75 per cent of 
these, then you would have 1,150 additions 
to your flock. One-half, or say 575, will be 



THE OZARK REGION 



11 



cockerels, which you sell as broilers or fry- 
ers at 40 cents each, increasing the income 
by $230. Your 575 pullets go into the laying 
pens. 

"Of your original 120 hens you select 20 
of the best for breeding, and sell the 100 
as butcher meat for $50 and you have this 
table of income from your small flock the 
first year: 

1,200 dozen eggs from laying pens. . .$360.00 
125 dozen eggs from breeding pens. 37.50 

575 broilers and fryers 230.00 

100 hens, butcher's meat 50.00 

Total cash $677.50 

"You have in your laying pens 575 fine 
pullets worth $1 each and 20 select hens 
worth .$1.50 each; in your breeding pens, as 
a start for the second year, easily $475 more 
stock than you started with, and which 
sum, added to the table above, gives a gross 
profit of $1,152.50. You could caponlze your 
cockerels and get more than 40 cents apiece 
for them, and you can frequently sell egg 
settings or extra fine cockerels at advanced 
prices. 



"Not everyone who goes into poultry-rais- 
ing gets these results, but there is enough 
good money in it to make it worth a man's 
time and attention. Poultry-raising is no 
■get-rich-quick' scheme, but a legitimate busi- 
ness, one of small beginnings but of large 
possibilities. If you start, stay with it. 
Your income is derived not only from poul- 
try, but from your strawberry patch, your 
truck patch, your cows and sows, and most 
of your living comes from the farm and only 
requires work instead of cash. Store in 
your cellar and pantry the raw and pre- 
served products of your garden and orchard. 
I do, and I have an appetite like a farm 
hand. And with the butter, the milk, eggs 
and poultry, our own cured bacon and hams 
and fresh fruit in season, which I have and 
you can have, you will live better than most 
rich folks in the city. The man of small 
means in the city doesn't know what good 
living is. Just think of having every good 
thing on the table that you want, without 
having to figure on the cost of it, and to 
know that you can have it that way every 
day in the year." 



The Counties and Towns of the Ozark 

Mountain Region 

Newton County, Missouri 



This county is one of the most westerly 
counties of the Ozark Plateau, and lies im- 
mediately north of McDonald County, which 
forms the southwest corner of the State of 
Missouri. It is rectangular in shape, is 
twenty miles wide north and south, and 
thirty-one miles long. Its area is G29 square 
miles or 403,000 acres. About one-third of 
the county is hilly, the remainder being com- 
paratively smooth, level lands, lying be- 
tween more undulating areas. The general 
slope of the surface is to the west and in 
the southern portion to the south. The 
county is splendidly watered, having numer- 
ous fine streams of clear water, and abound- 
ing in sparkling springs, some of them of 
remarkable size. All the brooks and creeks 
are typical mountain streams, flowing rapid- 
ly over clean sand and gravel. The yearly 
rainfall is between forty and fifty inches, 
and is usually well distributed; the average 
annual temperature is about 56 degrees. 
The snowfall is light and the winter is 
short and not excessively cold. The sum- 
mers are long compared with northern lati- 
tudes, but owing to the altitude, 1,000 to 



1,500 feet are, as a rule, pleasant. About 
two-thirds of the county was originally tim- 
bered. 

There is considerable diversity in the 
soils, the same varying from black to dark 
red and light gray, but in general they are 
limestone soils. Along the water courses 
they are black alluvials; on the uplands, 
deep red clays, very fertile, while in the tim- 
bered hills they are best suited for profit- 
able fruit growing. 

Wheat and corn are the principal grain 
crops, although other grains are grown in 
great quantity. Wheat runs from fifteen to 
thirty bushels per acre; corn, thirty to sixty 
and oats thirty to forty bushels per acre. 
Flax, buckwheat, sorghum, hay, clover and 
timothy are staple crops, blue grass pas- 
tures prevailing. Nearly all farmers engage 
more or less in raising livestock and cattle; 
hogs, sheep, horses and mules form no small 
part of the county's shipments of surplus 
products. 

In the northern part of the county is a 
great zinc field, forming part of the Joplin 
district. Mining is carried on extensively at 



12 



THE OZARK REGION 




A STREET IN NEOSHO, MO. 



Spurgeon, Granby and other points. Tripoli 
beds are worked at Seneca and Racine and 
soft coal has also been found. There are 
fine quarries of limestone and sandstone and 
large deposits of brick clays. 

The census of 1910 gives Newton County 
27,136 inhabitants of whom 3,G61 are resi- 
lent in Neosho and 6,421 in Neosho town- 
ship, which includes the city; Granby City 
has 2,442; Newtonia, 293; Seneca, 981, and 
Wentworth, 154 inhabitants. 

The City of Neosho. 

Neosho is the county seat of Newton 
County and is located about two and one-half 
miles from the geographical center of the 
county, at the crossing point of the Kan- 
sas City Southern and the St. Louis & San 
Francisco Railways, being also the terminal 
of the Missouri & North Arkansas Railway. 
It is 174 miles south of Kansas City and 
310 miles from St. Louis. The altitude is 
1,050 feet above sea level and it is built 
in a broad valley, surrounded by magnificent 
wooded hills. It is today one of the most 
substantial places of its size in Missouri. 
It is a solid, wealthy and steadily growing 
city, surrounded by a country that is full of 
natural resources. 

iThe business portion of the city is on level 
bottom land and lies between forest clad 
heights, upon which a portion of the resi- 
dence section is built. The well graded and 
drained streets, shaded on either hand with 
forest and ornamental trees, make beauti- 



ful park-like drives^ extending long distances 
and few smaller towns are so pleasing to 
the eye as is Neosho. 

Among Neosho's industrial enterprises are 
the elevator and mill of the Missouri and 
Kansas Grain Co., elevator and mills of the 
Neosho Milling Co., the Rush Milling Co.'s 
mill, the Valley Milling Co.'s mill, Neosho 
Creamery Co., Neosho Ice and Cold Storage 
Co., C. H. Smith's Cigar Factory, Neosho 
Electric Light Co., Municipal Water Works 
Plant, Neosho Ice Co., American Home Tele- 
phone Co., Neosho Bottling Works, Neosho 
Water Co., shippers of artesian water, 
Neosho Foundry and Machine Works, three 
newspapers, Neosho Canning Co., and the 
G. Hatzfeld Cider Mill and Vinegar Factory. 
The mercantile interests are represented in 
three banks with a combined capital of 
$140,000; resources, $1,112,246; deposits 
amounting to $887,066 and surplus and un- 
divided profits of $87,954, and also a building 
and loan association of over 270 members; 
two wholesale firms with a joint capital of 
$250,000; sixty-one retail firms with stocks 
valued at $500,000, six hotels, two fruit 
growers' associations, ten individual ship- 
pers of fruit and poultry, and five shippers 
of livestock. 

The shipments from Neosho comprise 
nearly every commodity used for human con- 
sumption, including livestock of all descrip- 
tion, grain, hay, mill products, lumber, lead 
and zinc ores, manufactured tripoli, poultry 
and eggs and great quantities of fruits and 



THE OZARK REGION 



13 



berries. Neosho is surrounded by apple and 
peach orchards, poultry farms; a large acre- 
age is devoted to commercial truck and more 
than 1,200 acres in the immediate vicinity 
are planted in strawberries. The shipments 
of berries average a hundred cars per season 
with 500 to 600 crates to the car, and the 
average price realized during the past sea- 
son was a little over two dollars per crate. 
The money yield per acre on strawberries, 
after deduction of expenses, runs from $100 
to $350 and as much as $521.50 has been ob- 
tained by some individual grower. Apples, 



properly handled, yield a revenue of $75.00 
to $250 per acre and similar returns are ob- 
tained from peaches. Sweet potatoes, grown 
as cannery stock, yield about 260 bushels to 
the acre and bring from 75c to 80c per 
bushel; tomatoes, as cannery stock, yield 
over 300 bushels per acre, bringing 25c per 
bushel or about $75 per acre. Grapes yield 
a revenue of $100 to $180 per acre. Large 
quantities of berries and cannery stock are 
also produced at Tipton Ford an d McEl- 
haney, stations of the K. C. S. Ry., in New- 
ton County. 



McDonald County, Missouri 



McDonald County forms the southwest 
corner of the state and is one hundred 
and sixty-five miles south of Kansas City. 
The area is 858 square miles, or 371,200 
acres. It is more hilly than the adjoining 
county of Newton and about one-half of the 
area is suitable for general farming opera- 
tions. One-fourth of the area, largely in the 
north half of the county is high, flat land, 
originally covered with a heavy forest 
growth, consisting of several varieties of 
oak, hickory, walnut, wild cherry, sycamore, 
maple, ash and locust. A limited growth of 
pine originally grew in the county, but was 
removed by the earlier settlers. Four tracts 
of prairie land aggregating about 38,000 
acres, are located near the four corners of 
the county. The southern part of the coun- 
ty has more rough, broken land, being more 



precipitous along the Elk and Indian rivers 
and Buffalo and Sugar creeks, the most 
rugged country being in the southeast part 
of the county. The soil of the prairie lands 
is a clay loam, varying in color from choco- 
late to black. The flatwoods soils are gen- 
erally chocolate colored, some more fertile 
than others. The hill lands are generally 
gravelly, but fertile and are splendidly 
adapted to fruit growing and stock raising. 

McDonald is probably the best watered 
county in the state of Missouri. Great 
springs burst out from the hills everywhere, 
forming creeks and rivers, which course 
through the county in all directions, lif- 
fording a magnificent pure water supply for 
human consumption and for livestock. All 
the streams are full of game fishes and dur- 
ing the summer months this county is the 




CO'R'NFIF^'LD. ANDERSON, MO. 



14 



THE OZARK REGION 




A BUSY NEOSHO GIIIL. 



favorite resort for hundreds of visitors who 
come from the great cities to spend their 
vacations there. The scenery along the var- 
ious streams, and particularly along the Elk 
and Indian rivers, in natural beauty is not 
equalled anywhere. 

The natural pasturage in this county is 
exceptionally good and forage is grown 
cheaply. The contour of the country is such 
that good natural shelter is found every- 
where, and of pure water, there is the 
greatest abundance in the numerous swiftly 
flowing mountain streams found in all parts 
of the county. Under the circumstances 
stock raising is a profitable occupation. 
General farming is the engrossing pursuit 
of the greater part of the population, but 
within a few miles of the railway stations a 
magnificent fruit, truck, berry and poultry 
raising industry has been developed; as a 



matter of fact, nearly the whole 22 miles 
traversed by the Kansas City Southern Rail- 
way form a beautiful succession of apple 
and peach orchards, strawberry beds and 
truck gardens, interspersed with small towns 
and glimpses of river and mountain scenery. 

The population of McDonald County ac- 
cording to the census of 1910 is 13,539, and 
the altitude above sea level varies from 1,000 
to 1,.500 feet. Pineville, about seven miles 
east of the railway, is the county seat and 
has 600 inhabitants. The railway stations 
en the K. C. S. Ry. are Goodman, Anderson, 
Lanagan, Elk Springs and Noel. 



Goodman, Missouri 

This village is south of Kansas City, Mo., 
IS-j miles, has an altitude of 1,257 feet and 
a population of 350. The country adjacent to 
Goodman is well suited to agricultural and 
horticultural pursuits and in 1910 there were 
in cultivation in the immediate vicinity 200 
farms, on which were planted 1,500 acres in 
corn, 400 in wheat, 600 in oats, 2,500 in ap- 
ple orchards, 500 in peach orchards, 200 in 
strawberries, 100 in commercial truck and 
1,500 acres in forage, pasturage and 
meadows. The shipments of surplus prod- 
ucts amounted to 33 carloads of apples, 600 
crates of cantaloupes, 700 crates of peaches, 
9 carloads of strawberries, 8 carloads of 
hogs and cattle, 37 carloads of hard wood 
lumber and railroad ties and 30,000 pounds 
of dairy products. During 1909-10 four hun- 
dred new people settled on farms and made 
improvements valued at $10,000. 

There are at Goodman two general mer- 
chandise stores, a hotel, lumber yard, 
church, school, and two fruit growers' as- 
sociations. The gross annual mercantile 
business of Goodman amounts to $50,000 to 
$75,000. 

Wanted: A large general merchandise 
store, bank, furniture store, implement store, 
harness shop, newspaper and printing office, 
notion and racket store, shoe shop, brick 
yard, physician, dentist, teacher. Good 
openings for cannery, creamery, cold stor- 
age, fruit evaporator, chair factory, cooper- 
age. Plenty of oak and hickory. Town 
growing rapidly. 



Anderson, Missouri 

An incorporated town with a population 
of 950 in the town limits, and 1,772 in An- 
derson township; south of Kansas City, Mo., 
192 miles and from Joplin, Mo., 37 miles; 
altitude above sea level 904 feet. A thrifty 
rapidly growing town, situated in an ideal 



THE OZARK REGION 



15 




HARVESTING WHEAT, SILOAM SPRINGS, ARK. 



farming, live stoclv and fruit growing coun- 
try. Grain and forage are produced in large 
quantity and the raising of high grade live 
stock of various Ivinds is a profitable busi- 
ness, aggregating about $500,000 annually. 
On lands convenient to the railway large 
quantities of fruit, berries and commercial 
truck are grown, yielding, with poultry and 
eggs, a revenue of $150,000 to $200,000. 
There are in the immediate vicinity of An- 
derson 150 farms, comprising 5,000 acres, of 
which 1,000 acres are planted in corn, 300 in 
wheat, .100 in oats, 250 in apples, 300 in 
peaches, 1,000 in strawberries, 50 in com- 
mercial truck and 50 in forage. During 
1910 and 1911 five hundred and forty new 
people settled on farms, who purchased 11,- 
000 acres and planted 400 acres in berries, 
125 acres in truck and 100 acres in orchard, 
expending about $20,000 for improvements. 
The shipments of surplus products from 
Anderson for the years 1910-11 consisted 
of 4 carloads of poultry, 10 carloads of 
eggs, 44 carloads of cattle, 65 of hogs, 
4 of horses and mules, 10 of sheep; 4 
carloads of grain, 15 of hay, 3 of flour, 1 
of bran and feed, 32 carloads of apples, 
value $13,200; 7 cars of cantaloupes; 1910 
crop of strawberries, 75 cars, value $93,- 
500; 1911 crop, 60 cars, value $66,700; 90 
carloads of lumber, 4 of logs, 20 of rail- 
road ties, 120 of fence posts and mine props 
and 12 carloads of cord wood, making a total 
of 580 carloads in full car shipments. In 
addition to these there were shipped 7,500 



pounds of hides and pelts, 1,200 pounds of 
tallow, 15,600 gallons of cream, 16,000 
pounds of wool, 1,000 pounds of mohair, 
10,000 pounds of furs and 100 pounds of 
beeswax. 

The commercial and industrial commun- 
ity consists of twelve merchants in ra- 
rious lines, the State Bank of Anderson, 
capital $25,000; a weekly newspaper, two 
hotels, the Anderson Berry Growers' As- 
sociation, in addition to which the town 
has an opera house, a waterworks system, 
public park, electric light plant, telephone 
system, three churches and two public 
schools. The improvements in town dur- 
ing 1910 and 1911 consisted of 24 new 
dwellings, costing $29,000; tliree stone 
bridges, $3,000; park improvements, $2,000, 
and a waterworks and electric light plant 
costing $18,000. 

Business Opportunities: Wanted, a hard- 
wood lumber mill, a good hotel, furniture 
dealer and undertaker, clothing and shoe 
store, printing office. Abundant raw mate- 
rial for a cannery, cheese factory and a 
creamery. Good opening for an ice fac- 
tory, cold storage plant, fruit box factory 
and a building contractor. 

Elk Springs, Missouri 

Is 197 miles south of Kansas City, Mo., and 
42 miles from Joplin, Mo. The altitude Is 
1,000 feet and the population about 75. It 
has a general merchandise and grocery store 
school, hotel and several fruit, berry and 
poultry shippers. It is on the site of the 



16 



THE OZARK REGION 



old town of Rutledge, built before the Civil 
War, and, in 1861, was for one day the 
capital of the great State of Missouri. An- 
other legislature was doing business at Jef- 
ferson City at about the same time. The 
village is surrounded by a prosperous farm- 
ing and stock raising country, noted also for 
the fine crops of apples, peaches, berries and 
shipments of poultry and eggs. 

The principal attraction of Elk Springs is 
the beauty of its location and that of the 
adjacent country. It is situated in a short 
bend of Elk River, the ends of which are 
within a quarter of a mile of each other, 
while the bend itself is a curve about five 
miles long, forming about three-fourths of a 
circle, any part of which is within a mile of 
the railway station. Within a distance of 
three miles, there are twelve miles of good 
fishing water and this feature has made 
it a most popular resort for those who en- 
joy fishing for sport. 

Wanted: Grocery store. Opening for 
hardwood sawmill, fruit box factory. 

Lanagan, Missouri 

The village of Lanagan has 500 inhabi- 
tants, is south of Kansas City, Mo., 195 miles 
and has an altitude of 854 feet. The general 
business of the village depends on the agri- 
cultural and forest resources of the adjacent 
country. The Dolson Bros.' apple orchard, 
one of the tracts of the Ozark Orchard Com- 
pany, and several large private orchards are 



located in the immediate vicinity. Near the 
railway fruit growing is the predominating 
pursuit; farther out, general farming and 
the production of poultry and livestock con- 
stitute the principal business of the people. 
The shipments of products, in an ordinary 
year, amount to about 500 to 1,000 crates of 
strawberries, 10 to 20 carloads of apples, 
10,000 to $20,000 pounds of poultry, 2,000 to 
S,000 cases of eggs, 15 carloads of cattle, 10 
to 20 of hogs, 20 to 30 carloads of mine 
timbers and props and 25 to 50 carloads of 
railroad ties. 

There are in Lanagan two general mer- 
chandise stores with stocks valued at $12,000 
one hotel, one church, one assembly hall, one 
public school and livery barn. Town and 
country have made a rapid growth in the 
past two years. 

There are good openings in Lanagan for 
an implement store, dry goods store, furni- 
ture store, drug store, physician, teacher, 
lime works and a fruit evaporator. 



Noel, Missouri 



This Is one of the most picturesque little 
villages in the Ozark region. It is situated 
in the extreme southwest corner of the 
state, about two miles north of the Arkansas 
line and three miles from the Oklahoma line. 
Its scenic surroundings are beautiful, being 
located at the junction cf the Elk River and 
Butler Creek, where the two streams have 
cut through tremendous ledges of solid 
rocks, affording scenic effect, which cannot 




PACKING APPLES, SILOAM SPRINGS, ARK. 



THE OZARK REGION 



17 




MULE RAISED BY L. H. CRUMBAUGH, NEOSHO, MO. 



be duplicated anywhere. Noel is south of 
Kansas City 201 miles and its altitude at the 
railway track is 826 feet. The pei'manent 
population is 500, most of whom are en- 
gaged in agricultural and horticultural pur- 
suits; the shipments from Noel consisting 
of wheat, strawberries, cattle, poultry ar.d 
eggs, horses and mules, sheep, hogs, rail- 
road ties and hardwood timbers. 

There are in Noel lour general stores, a 
drug store, two hardware stores, a hotel, a 
club house, a bank, two churches, hour 
mill and elevator, a fruit growers' asoocia- 
tion, commercial club, a good public school, 
grist mill and several smaller business es- 
tablishments, all of which appear to be pros- 
perous. 

Elk River, on the bank of which Noel is 



situated, is one 
streams in the 
fish, such as 
croppie, perch, 
summer season 
to Noel to fish 
few places can 
adapted to this 



of the most famous lishing 
state, abounding v/ith game 

black bass, jack salmon, 

blue cat, etc. During the 
hundreds of fishermen come 
and have their outings and 

be found which are better 
purpose. 



Wanted: A hotel, restaurant, nev/spaper, 
confectionery, dry goods store, clothing 
store, produce shipper, feed store, lawyer, 
dentist. Available for manufacturing ])lant, 
a splendid water power about 500-h. p Im- 
mense quantities of clean gravel, limestone 
for lime and for building. Fine opening for 
a creamery. 



18 



THE OZARK REGION 



Benton County, Arkansas 



Benton County forms the northwest cor- 
ner of the State of Arkansas, has an area of 
892 square miles or 570,880 acres, an aver- 
age altitude of 1,200 feet and population of 
33,389. It lies on the western slope of the 
Ozark Uplift and has more or less hilly 
land, though there are also fine larsre level 
areas, all in a high state of cultivation. It 
is, in every sense, a first-class genei'al farm- 
ing country. The valley lands readily pro- 
duce from twenty to thirty bushels of vheat, 
or from forty to seventy bushels of corn per 
acre. Forage crops of all kinds yield boun- 
tifully and horses, mules, cattle and hogs are 
raised in great numbers and are profitably 
marketed. The uplands also produce well, 
but are particularly well suited for the com- 
mercial production of fruits, berries, truck, 
poultry and eggs, and, as a matter of fact, 
Benton County is more famous for its fruit, 
berry and poultry shipments than for its 
general farm products. It is estimated that 
there are about six million apple trees, two 
and one-half million peach trees and several 
thousand acres of strawberries and black- 
berries in the county. The fruit shipments 
in an ordinary year run in value from three 
to three and one-half million dollars and a 
quarter million might be added for poultry 
and eggs. 

Benton County was originally heavily 
wooded and still has an abundance of tim- 



ber suitable for most purposes. Excellent 
limestone for building or for the manufac- 
ture of lime and good clays for 'orick tvre 
found in all parts of the county and indica- 
tions of oil, lead and zinc have been found 
in several places. The manufacture of fruit 
products and dairying are important indus- 
tries. In this county, as in other fruit grow- 
ing counties of Arkansas, the fruit shipping 
towns are surrounded by a dense rural popu- 
lation within two or three miles of the rail- 
way station, who are practically town peo- 
ple, but live just outside of the town limits. 
The natural conditions in Benton County do 
not require that the farmer shall limit him- 
self to one line of production, that is to say, 
put all his eggs in one basket. He can grow 
wheat, oats, corn, clover, timothy, any of 
the domestic grasses, blue grass, flax, al- 
falfa and potatoes here as abundanrly as 
elsewhere and indulge in stock raising, poul- 
try raising and in fruit and berry culture be- 
sides. He can so arrange it as to have a 
cash income almost every month in the year, 
if he properly diversifies his farming opera- 
tions. 

Bentonville is the county seat and has 
1,956 residents within the town limits and 
3,755 in Osage township; Rogers, the largest 
town, has 2,820 inhabitants, the township 
4,476; Siloam Springs, 2,405, the township 
3,885; Gentry, 668, the township 1,383; De- 




PEACH ORCHARD, GRAVKTTE, ARK. 



THE OZARK REGION 



19 




MULES RAISED AT ANDERSON, MO. 



catur, 246, Decatur township 1,156; Gra- 
vette, 569, the township 1,254; Sulphur 
Springs, 500, the township 1,050. All of these 
are important fruit, berry and poultry ship- 
ping points. A visitor to any of them would 
find it difficult to determine visually whc^re 
the town ends and the country begins. 

Sulphur Springs, Arkansas 

Sulphur Springs, the most northwesterly 
town in Arkansas, is a noted health aud 
pleasure resort, situated 205 miles south of 
Kansas City, Mo. Its aRitude is about 1,000 
feet near the railroad track and several hun- 
dred feet higher in other parts of the town. 
It has several medicinal springs of great 
hygienic value and these are visited by sev- 
eral thousand people annually, who seek re- 
lief from chronic ailments of various kinds. 
The town, containing a number of attractive 
stone and brick buildings, surrounds a beau- 
tiful park of about thirty acres, in which are 
situated the several springs, each properly 
housed and protected. Running through the 
park is Butler Creek, a clear, sparkling 
mountain stream, carrying a considerable 
flow of water. A rock dam thrown aci'oss 
the stream forms a charming lake half a 
mile long, affording fine boating, fishing and 
bathing. High wooded hills entirely sur- 
round the town, and from the tops of these 
most magnificent views extending over many 
miles of country may be had. The most 
noted of the springs are the Chalybeate or 



Iron Springs, the waters of which are cred- 
ited with highly beneficial effects in com- 
plaints peculiar to women and iii oases of 
general debility. The Siloam Sprin;^, cred- 
ited with favorable action in cases of stom- 
ach disorders, catarrh, sluggish liver, dys- 
pepsia, gout, constipation, rheumatism, etc.; 
the White and Black Sulphur Springs, used 
for the relief of liver disorders, malaria, 
gout, kidney disorders, etc., and thi Lithia 
Spring, good for stomach disorders, rheu- 
matism, torpid liver, etc. 

The accommodations for the care and en- 
tertainment of health and pleasure .-seekers 
are modern in every way and are capable of 
accommodating a large number of people at 
one time. The Sulphur Sprin.gs Sanitarium 
and Bath House can accommodate 200 
guests, and the five other modern hotels can 
take care of an equal number at any time 

'There are in Sulphur Springs a bank, ten 
large mercantile establishments with suxks 
valued at about $50,000, three churches, op- 
era house, a public school, newspaiie'', elec- 
tric light plant, bottling works, hardwood 
mill, railway eating house, lumber yards, 
commercial club and a fruit growers' asso- 
ciation. 

The adjacent country will abundantly ))ro- 
duce all the ordinary field crops — corn, 
wheat, rye, oats, flax, hay, etc. — and affords 
fine pasturage for all kinds of stock. It is 
splendidly adapted to poultry raising and is 
most excellent for the cultivation of apple 
and peach orchards and strawberries on a 



20 



THE OZARK REGION 




POULTRY COLLECTED FOR SHIPMENT, GRAVETTE, ARK. 



commercial scale. There are within a ra- 
dius of four miles of Sulphur Springs be- 
tween three and four hundred acres in tree 
fruits and a similar acreage in strawberries. 
Wanted: Large dry goods and genes' fur- 
nishings store, restaurant. Good opening 
for an ice plant. 



Gravette, Arkansas 

Gravette is 210 miles south of Kansas City, 
Mo., and has an altitude of 1,218 feet. The 
population within the town limits is 569, and 
in Wallace township 1,254. It is a crossing 
point of the Kansas City Southern and ihe 
St. Louis & San Francisco railways and is a 
prosperous, rapidly growing town in the 
midst of a fertile farming region, being sur- 
rounded by several hundred fine farms, or- 
chards, poultry yards, truck and stock farms. 
About 15,000 acres are in cultivation within 
a radius of five miles, of which 7,000 acres 
are in apple orchards, 700 in peach orchards, 
1,350 in strawberries, tomatoes, cantaloupes 
and commercial truck, 4,000 in corn, and 
about 3,000 acres in small grain, forage and 
pasturage. The shipments of surplus prod- 
ucts during 1910 amounted to 25 carloads of 
corn, wheat and oats, 50 carloads of apples 
(150 in 1909), 3,000 crates of peaches, 6,000 
crates of strawberries, 20,000 pounds of 
poultry (75,000 in 1909), 5.000 cases of eggs. 



30 carloads of cattle, 10 carloads of horses 
and mules, 5 carloads of sheep, 25 of hogs 
and 10 carloads of railroad ties. 

The business interests in Gravette are 
represented by one National and one State 
bank, with $50,000 aggregate capital and 
$140,000 deposits; some thirty or more sub- 
stantial mercantile firms, handling goods in 
all lines, with stocks valued at about $100,- 
000; a grain elevator, three flour and grist 
mills, white lime works, a fruit evaporating 
plant, vinegar factory, broom factory, can- 
nery, a newspaper, two publishing concerns, 
two hotels, packing sheds of the Farmers' 
Union. The town has also an electric light 
plant, three churches and a fine public 
school building. The value of the live stock 
shipped annually is from $50,000 to $75,000, 
of lime $40,000, of poultry and eggs $30,000. 
The total shipments of poultry from Benton 
County amounted to 35 carloads of 15,000 
pounds each, and 75 carloads of eggs. 

Corn, wheat, forage and other field crops 
are extensively grown and are largely con- 
sumed in the raising of live stock. Dairying- 
is developing into an important industry and 
will form an important source of income. 
New people are settling on the lands adja- 
cent to Gravette and many engage in the 
intense cultivation of small tracts of land, 
as more money can be realized from fruits, 
berries and truck on small tracts than from 
large farms which are cultivated by the or- 
dinary methods. 



THE OZARK REGION 



21 



Wanted: Harness shop, meat market, 
bakery. Good opening for electric light and 
waterworks plant, cannery, cold storage. 

Decatur, Arkansas 

Decatur is one of the several prosperous 
towns in Benton county, and according to 
the U. S. Census has 246 inhabitants in the 
town limits and 1,156 in Decatur township. 
According to the local count, the population 
is 450. Decatur is 217 miles south of Kan- 
sas City, Mo., and 62 miles from Joplin, Mo., 
and in point of altitude, 1,231 feet, is one of 
the more elevated towns on the Kansas City 
Southern Railway. The business part of the 
town has been almost entirely rebuilt within 
the last four years, nearly all the frame 
buildings having been replaced by attractive 
brick and concrete structures. 

It is a compact little town, surrounded by 
some 300 farms and orchards within a radius 
of five miles. About 2,000 acres are de- 
voted to apple orchards and other fruits, ber- 
ries and cannery stock, and 5,000 to 6,000 
acres to corn and general field crops. The 
principal business of the town is handling 
and shipping fruits and the manufacture of 
fruit products. The Holland-American Fruit 
Products Co. has one of the best equipped 
and most complete canning, evaporating and 
preserving plants in the state, and provides 
a good market for all products not shipped. 
The year 1909 was not a good fruit year, but 
the shipments from Decatur amounted to 18 



carloads of apples, 1,800 crates of canta- 
loupes, 22,000 crates of strawberries, 4,000 
crates of blackberries, 3,500 pounds of mis- 
cellaneous truck, 26,000 pounds of poultry, 
850 cases of eggs of 30 dozen each, 10 car- 
loads of cattle and 15 carloads of hogs. 
Within three and one half miles of Decatur 
are 300,000 apple trees, 180,000 peach trees 
and more than 600 acres of strawberries and 
blackberries. The countrj' adjacent to De- 
catur is one of small farms intensely culti- 
vated and the money returns obtained per 
acre are large, in some cases astonishing. 

Decatur has made a steady growth from 
year to year and now has a first class can- 
nery, costing about $30,000; a bank with 
$35,000 to $50,000 deposits; an excellent 
graded school in a modern brick school 
building, costing $10,000; some fifteen or 
twenty mercantile establishments, housed in 
modern brick or concrete buildings; a large 
concrete shippers' warehouse, fruit packing 
houses, concrete block factory, water works, 
electric lights, etc. During the year ending 
June 30, 1910, there were built twelve dwell- 
ings, costing $12,000; fourteen mercantile 
buildings, costing $50,000; two factory build- 
ings, $3,000; a new hotel, $1,500; park im- 
provements, $800; street improvements, 
$600; new telephone improvements, $600. 
Two mercantile concerns with stocks aggre- 
gating $7,000 opened up for business. 

Wanted: Harness shop, large dry goods 
store, meat market. Good openings for 
creamery station, ice factory, electric light 
plant, cold storage. 




PACKING PEACHES FOR SHIPMENT, DECATUR, ARK. 



22 



THE OZARK REGION 




A STOCK FARM, GENTRY. ARK. 



Gentry, Arkansas 

Gentry is situated about midway north 
and south near the west line of Benton Coun- 
ty. It is 222 miles south of Kansas City, 
Mo., and the altitude is 1,252 feet. Accord- 
ing to the U. S. Census, the population with- 
in the town limits is 668, and that of Gen- 
try township 1,383. The local count, based 
on the school district census, claims a pop- 
ulation of 1,200. The town lies on a high, 
level plateau, a beautiful nearly level coun- 
try, interspersed with groves of young tim- 
ber on the west; rolling timber land with an 
occasional rich valley on the east; a fine, 
fertile valley on the north, and Flint Creek 
valley on the south; and still further south 
by a very level country — mostly prairie. 

The principal sources of income at Gentry 
are general farming, the raising of live- 
stock, fruit and berry growing and poultry 
raising. The annual fruit shipments in an 
ordinary season are valued at from $200,000 
to $250,000, consisting in the main of apples, 
peaches and berries. Gentry, on account of 
its altitude, was selected as one of the or- 
chard sites of the Ozark Orchard Company, 
and for five miles north on both sides of the 
railway track they have a continuous or- 
chard. There are in cultivation in the im- 
mediate vicinity of Gentry twenty-five sec- 
tions of land, of which about one-half is 



planted in fruit, one-fourth in corn and 
small grain and one-fourth is devoted to for- 
age and pasturage. Of the land devoted to 
fruits between 6,000 and 7,000 acres are 
planted in apples, about 5,000 in peaches and 
about 1,500 acres in strawberries, raspber- 
ries, blackberries, tomatoes and cannery 
stock. The annual egg shipments run from 
4,000 to 6,000 cases of 30 dozen each and 
those of poultry from 69,000 to 95,000 pounds. 
The berry shipments vary from 5,000 to 15,- 
000 crates. During 1910 there were shipped 
from Gentry, 8 carloads of wheat, 49 of 
apples, 14 of peaches, 7 of strawberries, 22 
of cattle, 2 of horses and mules, 17 of hogs 
and sheep, 22,000 pounds of hides and furs 
and 14,000 pounds of dairy products. The 
small grain production is consumed almost 
entirely at home; the annual production is 
from 20,000 to 30,000 bushels of wheat and 
about 30,000 bushels of oats. Large quanti- 
ties of vegetables are produced for cannery 
stock, and consist of sweet potatoes, pump- 
kins, tomatoes, etc., and are used from .July 
to October. The butter shipments amount 
annually to about 12,000 opunds. 

Gentry has a six-room public school and 
a high school costing $5,000; the Hendrix 
Academy, costing $10,000; water works, elec- 
tric lighting, an auditorium, large commo- 
dious hotel, the Citizens' Bank, a good roller 
flour mill, box and barrel factory, five fruit 
corporations, several fine churches and two 
fruit growers' associations. There are some 



T HE OZARK R E (i I O N 



23 



twenty-five or more mercantile firms repre- 
senting various lines, a newspaper, and pro- 
fessional men engaged in variovis lines. The 
country immediately surrounding Gentry, 
say within a radius of two and one-half 
miles, is densely settled, having about one 
family to every forty acres, and the major- 
ity of tracts in cultivation range from five 
to twenty acres. Town and country are in- 
creasing in population steadily and exten- 
sive improvements are made each year. 

Wanted: First-class dry goods store, drug 
store, notion or racket store, shoemaker. 
Good opening for an ice and cold storage 
plant, vinegar factory, spoke and handle 
factory. 



Siloam Springs, Arkansas 

Siloam Springs is south of Kansas City, 
Mo., 229 miles, at an altitude of 1,200 feel. 
It lies on a rolling plateau in the southern 
part of Benton county, one and one-haif 
miles from the Oklahoma state line. The 
U. S. Census for 1910 gives it a population 
of 2,405, and for Hico township including the 
town, 3,885. The local estimate for several 
years has been 4,000. Siloam Springs is, 
strictly speaking, a town of homes scattered 
over much territory, giving each dwelling 
plenty of ground. The business part is sub- 
stantially built of brick and stone and the 



stocks carried in the stores in magnitude 
are equal to those found in much larger 
places. There are seven or eight attractive 
church buildings and high and public school 
buildings equal to the best in the state. The 
Arkansas Conference College, recently great- 
ly enlarged, has a high standing among ed- 
ucational institutions. The industrial en- 
terprises consist of the electric light plant 
and water works system, municipal under- 
takings, a meal and grist mill, a large cold 
storage and ice plant, a water shipping 
plant and bottling works, two steam laun- 
dries, foundry and machine shop, broom 
factory, the largest vinegar factory in the 
U. S., a cannery, creamery, and several 
fruit evaporating establishments. The mer- 
cantile enterprises are represented in two 
National banks and a state bank, with an 
aggregate capital of about $150,000 and de- 
posits exceeding half a million dollars; 
some thirty or more mercantile houses, cov- 
ering' all lines, four hotels, opera house, tel- 
ephone company, two newspapers — one 
daily — etc. 

The annual improvements and better- 
ments in the town and immediate vicinity 
average in value about $100,000. During the 
•year 1910 twenty-five new dwellings were 
built and three new mercantile stocks in- 
stalled, and much improvement was made 
on the adjacent farms. Nearly all the streets 
of Siloam Springs have been graded and im- 
provement is carried on continuously. Some 




STREET IN GENTRY, ARK. 




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26 



THE OZARK REGION 




THRESHING WHEAT, SILOAM SPRINGS. ARK. 



twenty-five miles or more of cement side- 
walks have been laid and substantial steel 
bridges have been built across Sager creek, 
a stream flowing through the town. The 
Arkansas Chautauqua Association has a fine 
pavilion, with a seating capacity for 3,000 
people. 

The sources of income in Siloam Springs 
and vicinity are manifold, but the greatest 
resource is the production of fine fruit. The 
climate and soil are splendidly adapted to 
commercial fruit growing. The soil ranges 
from a red clay to a black loam, underlaid 
with a red clay subsoil. Below the subsoil 
the bedrock is limestone, which makes the 
finest foundation for fruit-growing lands. 
Gravelly soil is found in places and is par- 
ticularly esteemed, because it imparts early 
ripening, color and flavor to fruits, insuring 
them lasting favor in the markets. 

The largest and most important fruit crop 
is the apple, and after that the peach. There 
are usually harvested in Benton County two 
million dollars worth of apples, and there 
are more bearing apple trees in Benton 
County than in any other county in the 
world. Peaches, strawberries, blackberries, 
raspberries, etc., yield a large revenue. The 
strawberry is always a reliable crop and 
pays, one year with another, from $50 to 
$100 per acre, and in favorable seasons 
sometimes more than double this. The peach 
is somewhat unreliable in its yield, doing 
best on the high lands. It pays handsomely 
when a crop is obtained, which happens fre- 
quently enough to make it interesting. Fine 
peaches are produced every year in some 
parts of the county, but are not produced 



regularly in any particular locality. The re- 
cent introduction of the orchard smudge pot 
will probably permanently remedy this con- 
dition. 

While fruit growing is the engrossing pur- 
suit of the people, general farming and stock 
raising are very important industries in the 
vicinity. Corn, wheat, oats, barley, rye, tim- 
othy, alfalfa, clover, bluegrass, etc., vre 
grown extensively and the production of 
high grade horses, mules, cattle and hogs is 
large and profitable. The poultry and egg 
production is also very important. The 
three produce dealers in Siloam Springs pay 
$30,000 per month for the eggs and poultry 
handled by them. During the year 1910 one 
hundred new people settled on farm lands 
near Siloam Springs and purchased 5,000 
acres of farm lands. The land in cultivation 
in 1910 was planted as follows: Corn, 1,000 
acres; wheat, 1,000 acres; oats, 500 acres; 
apples, 2,000 acres; peaches, 3,000 acres; 
strawberries, 500 acres; commercial truck, 
100 acres; new orchard plantings, 300 acres; 
strawberry plantings, 300 acres; total within 
five-mile radius, 8,600 acres. Among the 
surplus products shipped were 20 carloads 
of wheat, 50 carloads of apples, 25 carloads 
of poultry, 50 carloads of eggs, 20 carloads 
of cattle, 25 carloads of horses and mules, 
10 carloads of hogs, etc. 

Siloam Springs has been for many years 
a favorite health and pleasure resort for 
the people of Louisiana, Texas and Oklaho- 
ma, and during the summer months the pop- 
ulation is increased from 30 to 50 per cent. 
The climate and water of Siloam Springs 
are conducive to good health on general 



THE OZARK REGION 



27 



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HARVESTING THE PEACH CROP, DECATUR, ARK. 



principles, and the water has a decided ben- 
eficial effect on rheumatic, kidney and stom- 
ach disorders. The moral environments of 
the town are the best. There are no saloons 
with their attendant vices, no gambling 
houses, or disreputable places of any kind. 
The climate is nearly perfect, the waters of 
the springs pure and healthful, living is 
cheap, fruit plentiful and the social atmos- 
phere pure and wholesome. The religious 
element predominates and Siloam Springs is 
essentially a city of churches, schools and 
colleges, delightful homes, and, all things 
considered, a very pleasant place to live in. 



Wanted: 
plant. 



New hotel, canneries, brick 



Rogers, Arkansas 

Rogers is the present terminus of the 
Kansas City & Memphis Railway, which op- 
erates a line between Siloam Springs ana 
Rogers. It lies in the Ozarks at an altitude 
of 1,400 feet, and according to the U. S. 
Census of 1910 has 2,820 inhabitants within 
the town limits and 4,476 in the township. 
According to local estimates the population 
is 4,000. 

Rogers, as a town, is twenty-seven years 
old. Its population is nearly all Americaii 
born. It has seven churches, good public 
schools, and a splendid academy. The in- 
dustrial enterprises in operation are a fiist- 
class electric light and water plant, a large 
ice and cold storage plant, a flouring mill 
with 150-barrel capacity, a very complete 
white lime factory, a number of fruit evap- 
orators, one cider and vinegar factory, two 



large canning factories handling both fruits 
and vegetables, two barrel factories and a 
number of smaller industrial enterprises. 
There are also in Rogers two large poultry 
packing houses, a number of egg buyers, 
several wholesale fruit and commission 
houses, a wholesale grocery house, capital 
$50,000, a dozen retail grocers and retail 
houses dealing in other lines, four banks, 
with $450,000 deposits, sanitarium and the 
Rogers Commerciil Club. 

All the streets have sewers, are well 
graded and there are more miles of concrete 
sidewalks than in any town of the same 
population in the country. Five rural de- 
livery routes radiate from Rogers, and three 
weekly newspapers are published there. 

The country trade is dependent largely 
upon the fruit-growing industry, although 
general farming, stock and poultry raising 
are important factors in the husbandry of 
the country. 

Benton County in 1907, produced one and 
one-half million bushels of apples, shipping 
apples 1,000 cars, evaporated 2,000,000 
pounds, strawberries 78 cars, peaches 150 
cars. Rogers shipped of green apples 1G4 
cars, cold storage 100 cars, value $100,- 
000; evaporated apples 40 cars, value $100,- 
000; canned fruit 100,000 bushels; vinegar 
factory 61,686 bushels; strawberries shipped 
20 cars, value $25,000; peaches total crop, 
72 cars, value $50,000. Total fruit crop, 
marketed from Rogers, $325,000. 

The average rainfall in Benton County is 
approximately 40 inches. According to the 
report of the Weather Bureau of the U. S. 
Agricultural Department, the average an- 
nual temperature is as follows: January, 



28 



THE OZARK REGION 







41 



PACKING APPiLES FOR SHIPMENT, DECATUR, ARK. 



42.8; February, 40.6; March, 58.4; April, 
51.2; May, 60.7; June, 71.6; July, 78.0; Au- 
gust, 58.3. These figures are a fair average 
of other years, and show an equable climate. 

The soil in the vicinity of Rogers is par- 
ticularly adapted to fruits, although every 
kind of grain found in the temperate zone 
will thrive here. The water is of the best 
found in the United States and is found in 
springs everywhere. Public health is ex- 
ceptionally good in Benton County. 

"While lands are still wonderfully cheap in 
Benton County, it should not be forgotten 
that this is a fairly well settled country. It 
is a country of small holdings, intensely 
cultivated, yielding revenues not obtainable 



from farms five or six times as large. Some- 
thing yielding revenue every month in the 
year is produced and marketed and very 
little money is tied up in an idle acreage. 
There are canneries at Neosho, Mo., Gentry, 
Gravette, Decatur, Siloam Springs and Rog- 
ers; evaporators at all of these towns; vine- 
gar factories at Rogers, Siolam Springs and 
Decatur; cold storage plants at Siloam 
Springs and Rogers, and at all points are 
well organized and effective Fruit Growers 
and Shippers Associations, which handle the 
product in a business-like and profitable 
way. There is no pioneering to be done in 
Benton County; it is more like "home" than 
any other coimty in the state. 












V ,> ' ■ ;'>%i,. 



A GOOD LIVE STOCK AND DAIRY COUNTRY. 



THE OZARK REGION 



29 



Washington County, Arkansas 



This county is not traversed by the Kan- 
sas City Southern Railway, but is easily 
reached by way of Westville, Okla., where 
there is a crossing of the K. C. S. Ry. and 
the St. L. & S. F. Ry. Washington is a typi- 
cal Ozark Mountain county, lying immedi- 
ately south of Benton County. It has an area 
of 975 square miles and a population of 33,- 
889. The general altitude is about 1,500 
feet above set level, and the surface is di- 
versified, having hills, valleys, level plains 
and rugged places, but nearly all the land is 
tillable and capable of prolific production. 
It has numerous small streams and thous- 
ands of springs and is splendidly watered 
and drained. The valley or bottom lands 
are rich alluvial soil and profitably produce 
every crop known in this latitude. The hill 



lands, while fertile, are well adapted to the 
cultivation of apples, peaches and berries, 
and the acreage devoted to these crops is 
nearly as large as in the adjoining county 
of Benton. The fruit, truck and poultry 
output of the county in an ordinary year is 
valued at about $2,000,000. 

The county has an abundance of good 
timber for building and for fuel, etc., as 
well as limestone and good clays. There are 
in all twenty-five towns and one hundred 
and sixty-five schools in the county. Payette- 
ville is the county seat and has 4,471 inhab- 
itants and 8,563 in Prairie township. The 
other larger towns in the county are Spring- 
dale, population 1,755; Prairie Grove, 774; 
Lincoln, 292, and Winslow, 289, all of them 
important fruit shipping points. 



Sebastian County, Arkansas 



The area of this county, which lies on the 
south bank of the Arkansas River and ad- 
joins the east line of Oklahoma, is 542 
square miles. The population is 52,278 of 
whom 28,000 reside with the city limits of 
Fort Smith. The surface of the county is 
hilly and undulating and slopes to the north 
from an altitude of 2,500 feet to 400 feet at 
the Arkansas River. Along the western bor- 
der there is some prairie land, but most of 
the county was originally heavily timbered. 
There is yet available in large quantity al- 
m.ost even,' kind of merchantable timber 
used in the United States. The principal 
field crops are cotton, corn, wheat, potatoes 
and forage of various kinds. About 100,000 
bales of cotton and sometimes 1,000 carloads 
of potatoes are shipped through Port Smith 
and other stations. Fruit and berry gross- 
ing is carried on e:xtensively and in some 
years 100,000 to 150,000 crates of strawber- 
ries and a hundred or more carloads of 
peaches have been shipped to the great 
northern cities from this and the adjacent 
(Crawford) county. 

The industrial development of the county 
has been great and new manufacturing en- 
terprises are started every month. The most 



important of these are the furniture and 
woodworking plants of Fort Smith, includ- 
ing great wagon works, the brick manufac- 
turing plants, clothing factories and cotton 
product mills. Nearly all of Sebastian Coun- 
ty is underlaid with semi-anthracite smoke- 
less coal, of which 2,500,000 to 3,000,000 tons 
are annually mined, representing a value of 
$5,000,000 to $7,000,000. Close to Port Smith 
is a great oil and gas field, providing natur- 
al gas for light and fuel for Fort Smith and 
nearby towns, and oil has been obtained iu 
sufficient quantity to warrant the building 
of a large oil refinery, which is in operation. 

The City of Fort Smith, Arkansas 

is south of Kansas City, Mo., 328 miles and 
situated at the confluence of the Arkansas 
and Poteau rivers. According to the U. S. 
Census of 1910, the population within the 
city limits is 23,975; in Upper township, 
25,283. According to local directory count 
and school census, 28,000. Among the eighty 
manufacturing plants in the city is a wagon 
factory turning out 15,000 vehicles annually, 
a refrigerator manufacturing plant, two cot- 
ton seed mills and one cotton compress. 



30 



THE OZARK REGION 



vinegar and pickle factory, two broom fac- 
tories, cracker factories, ten furniture fac- 
tories, ten wood-working plants, three of 
the largest brick plants west of the Missis- 
sippi River, three foundries and iron works, 
three crushed stone plants, two wagon fac- 
tories, two garment factories, a tobacco fac- 
tory, rim and bow factory, two ice and cold 
storage plants, shovel handle plant, two 
candy factories, box factories, cement block 
plant, concrete sewer tile plant, two veneer 
factories, two flour mills, two casket fac- 
tories, tent and awning factory, powder mill, 
trunk factory, three bottling works, cotton 
gins and other plants. The manufactured 
output is valued approximately at $30,000,- 
000; the values involved in the fifty-three 
wholesale and jobbing houses is in excess 
of $15,000,000; the value of fruit and truck 
handled, $3,400,000, and of cotton handled, 
$9,000,000. 

There are in Fort Smith 225 retail estab- 
lishments, and among the wholesale houses 
are one wholesale hardware house, one mil- 
linery house, one hat house, four produce 
houses, three branch packing houses, one 
seed house, one paper house, four dry goods 
houses, three oil companies, one refinery, 
two queensware houses, two commission 
houses, five printing concerns, one coffee 
roasting plant with 15,000 pounds daily ca- 
pacity, etc. The six banks have total re- 
sources of about $10,000,000 and deposits of 
?;7,269,704. 

The public utilities consist of a complete 
waterworks plant with 44 miles of water 
mains, a complete sewer system 42 miles in 



length, 27 miles of brick paved streets and 
30 miles of oil macadamized streets, school 
buildings valued at $550,000; good fire pro- 
tection, electric light wires and natural gas 
mains in all parts of the city; 20 miles of 
electric street railways, a steel wagon bridge 
across the Arkansas River costing $563,000; 
new union depot, $150,000. The transporta- 
tion facilities consist of the Kansas City 
Southern Railway, the St. Louis & San Fran- 
cisco, the Missouri Pacific, the Fort Smith 
& Western Railroad, Midland Valley Rail- 
road and Arkansas Central Railroad. The 
improvements made in Fort Smith in 1910- 
1911 consisted of 346 new dwellings, 27 busi- 
ness buildings, 14 M'arehouses, 2 hospitals, 
4 school buildings, 2 churches, 1 theater, 1 
railway depot, a union depot, a jail, 1 bank 
building, waterworks improvements, electric 
light improvements, and 4 factory buildings 
valued at $1,636,550. In the county there 
were 144 land transfers involving an expend- 
iture of $302,547. 

Wanted: Large seed house, nursery man, 
first-class dry goods, department store, sub- 
urban drug store, fancy grocery and deli- 
catessen istore, wholesale boot and shoe 
house, wholesale clothing house, wall paper 
house. Good opening for an advertising spe- 
cialist. Good location for farm implement 
plant, school desk, office and church supply 
factory, sewer pipe, tile and conduit plant, 
gasoline engine plant, canning factory, 
creamery, wagon factory, cotton mill, fruit 
preserving plant, candy factory, foundry and 
iron working plant, wholesale hardwood 
lumber concern, with mill and dry kilns. 



Crawford County, Arkansas 



Crawford County lies north of Sebastian 
County and borders on the Arkansas River, 
and its north line adjoins Washington Coun- 
ty. The area is 60 square miles, or 384,000 
acres, and the population 23,942; that of 
"Van Buren, the county seat, 3,878. The sur- 
face of the county slopes from north to 
south, the altitude varying from 400 feet on 
the Arkansas River to 1,600 feet near the 
north line. The surface is more or less 
rough and broken, being traversed by nu- 
merous streams, which have small, but very 
fertile valleys. The production of corn, 
grain, cotton, forage and livestock is large 
and in point of acre yield is as large as in 



any other county in the state. Van Buren is 
known in the fruit trade as one of the most 
important shipping points on account of its 
great shipments of peaches, strawberries, 
commercial truck, potatoes, cantaloupes and 
melons. Apples are grown extensively on 
the table lands and higher elevations; 
peaches produce immense crops and the 
strawberry production is enormous. The 
total value of the fruit, berry, potato, can- 
taloupe and truck crops of Crawford County 
exceeds $3,000,000 per year. 

The southern half of the county is under- 
laid with an excellent quality of coal, which 
is mined in large quantities, and superior 



THE OZARK REGION 



31 



brick clays and shales are found in close 
proximity. Good hardwood timber, suitable 
for many industrial purposes, is abundant. 



Points in Crawford County are easily 
reached by way of the Kansas City Southern 
Railway, through Fort Smith. 



Eastern Oklahoma 



As stated elsewhere in this publication, 
■part of the Ozark Plateau extends into east- 
ern Oklahoma. Most of the counties tra- 
versed by the Kansas City Southern Rail- 
way are in this region and are fully de- 



scribed in a pamphlet issued under the title 
"Eastern Oklahoma," and will be furnished 
free on appliaction to the Immigration Ag- 
ent, K. C. S. Ry., Kansas City, Mo. 



Scott County, Arkansas 



Scott, Sebastian, Polk and Sevier counties, 
Arkansas, belong to the southern section of 
the Ozark Plateau. In their general charac- 
teristics they resemble the counties of the 
northern section, the soils and climatic con- 
ditions being similar. The contour of the 
country is, however, more abrupt, the ele- 
vations greater, the hilly areas larger and in 
some localities there are evidences of for- 
mer volcanic disturbances which do not ap- 
pear in the northern section. 



Scott County is located about the center 
and on the western border of the state, with 
an area of about 1,000 square miles. It is 
made up of several wide valleys, running 
east and west, with an intervening broken, 
hilly country, ranging in altitude from fiOO 
to 2,700 feet. The greater part of the soil 
is sandy loam, with red clay subsoil. The 
lands in the well known Fourche Lafave, 
Poteau, Petitjean and Dutch Creek valleys 
are very fertile, and equally productive 




SHEEP RAISING IS PROFITABLE IN THE OZARK REGION. 



32 



THE OZARK R E G I O x\T 




n^i^ii3ffiQg 








STREET IN WALDRON, ARK. 



lands, but not in so large bodies, are found 
on the creeks and smaller streams of the 
county. The bottom lands produce with fair 
cultivation from three-fourths to one and 
one-fourth bales of cotton, from 40 to SO 
bushels of corn, and from 10 to 25 bushels 
of wheat per acre, without the aid of fertil- 
izers. Scott county will compare favorably 
with any county in the production of grapes, 
apples, peaches, plums, pears, berries, pota- 
toes and almost any variety of vegetables. 
Apples grown on the highlands are equal in 
size, quality and flavor with the best grown 
in the famous apple districts of Arkansas 
and yield as abundantly. The hilly lands are 
being largely used for this purpose. Scott 
County took the highest award at the 
World's Fair on apples. 

The mountain lands also afford excellent 
_stock range, as stock-raising is an easy and 
"profitable vocation for farmers in this coun- 
ty. The county is well watered. The lux- 
uriant growth of native grasses on the hill 
lands is greatly improved by removing the 
timber and allowing the sunshine to fairly 
strike the earth. Owing to the short and 
mild winters, cattle, hogs and other stock 
are frequently carried through the winter 
season with very little feed and often no 
shelter. This class of land is very cheap 
and much of it is subject to homestead en- 
try. The county clerk or county surveyor 
at Waldrcn, Ark., can advise intending set- 
tlers on homestead lands. There are in the 
county seventy-six school districts with 



school terms of six to nine months, accord- 
ing to population and wealth in the re- 
spective districts. Five Protestant denomi- 
nations are represented in the various con- 
gregations. 

The mineral resources of the county are 
as yet undeveloped, but coal of the best 
quality for commercial purposes and in great 
quantities has long been known to exist in 
the northern and western portions of the 
county, but no mining was done except fcr 
local needs until the building of the Arkan- 
sas Western Railway. Since then extensive 
mines have been opened at Coaldale and 
Bates, in the western part of the county. 
Iron and zinc exist in several places, but 
are undeveloped. Strong indications of oil 
are found in several localities. Brick and 
fire clays are abundant. 

The average rainfall In Scott County is 
about 50 inches per annum and the average 
temperature G8 degrees. A complete failure 
cf crops has never been known in the coun- 
ty. Prices of farm lands range from the 
cost of a U. S. homestead patent to about 
$30 per acre. 

Waldron, Arkansas 

Waldron is the county seat of Scott Coun- 
ty. Its altitude is 700 feet above sea level, 
and its population, according to the U. S. 
Census of 1910, is 900 within the town limits 
and 2,479 in Hickman township, includin'g 
the town. The local count gives the town a 



THE OZARK REGION 



33 




GOAT RAISING IN ARKANSAS. 



population of 2,000. Waldron is the present 
terminus of the Arkansas Western branch 
of the Kansas City Southern Railway and is 
raeched by way of Heavener, Okla., the 
junction point of the branch and the main 
line. Waldron is 370 miles south of Kansas 
City, Mo. It is substantially built and has 
twenty-two brick and stone business build- 
ings, most of them two-story structures; five 
attractive church buildings; the Waldron 
high school, a commodious eight-room, two- 
story building, and numerous attractive 
dwellings. The commercial interests are 
represented by two banks, with an ag.i^re- 
gate capital and surplus of $94,828 and de- 
posits of $388,071, and thirty or more mer- 
cantile establishments dealing in all lines. 
Among the other institutions are five hotels, 



two lodge and assembly halls, a public li- 
brary, two telephone companies, a gas com- 
pany, bottling works, flour mill, ice factory, 
two cotton gins, three grist mills, a brick 
yard, two sawmills, planing mills, shingle 
mill and four coal mining companies. The 
surplus products shipped annually amount to 
about 5,000 bales of cotton, from 30,000 to 
40,000 pounds of poultry, 700 to 800 carloads 
of lumber and from 5 to 20 carloads of cattle. 

Waldron contains all the essentials neces- 
sarj^ for an important trading point. It 
draws its trade from a thinly settled but 
rich territory within a radius of forty to 
lifty miles, and as the country is being rap- 
idly settled a steady growth of Waldron can 
be confidently expected. 




BRINGING IN THE COTTON, MENA, ARK. 



31 



THE OZARK REGION 




PEACH ORCHARD, POTEAU, OKLA. 



Wanted: Gents' furnishings store, shoe 
store, general merchandise store, printing 
oflBce, steam laundry, hardware store, tin 
shop, notion store, dentist. Good opening 
for cannery, ice plant, electric light plant. 

The other towns in Scott County, on the 
Arkansas Western branch of the K. C. S. 
Ry., are the following: 

Bates, Arkansas 

From Kansas City, Mo., 351 miles; popula- 
tion, U. S. Census 272. A lumber manu- 
facturing and coal mining town. There are 
in operation here the yellow pine sawmill of 
the Ingham Lumber Co., capacity 50,000 feet 
per day; the I. R. Packard coal mine and 
the Bates Coal & Coke Company's mine. 
The town has five mercantile stocks, valued 
at $140,000; a hotel, church, public school 
and several minor commercial and industrial 
concerns. The surplus products shipped an- 
nually from Bates, exclusive of coal, amount 
to 800 bales of cotton, 50 carloads of rail- 
road ties and 200 carloads of pine lumber. 

Wanted: Meat market, bakery. Opening 
for coal mines. 

Gauthron, Arkansas 

Cauthron is 357 miles from Kansas City, 
Mo., and has 50 inhabitants. The surround- 
ing country has an abundance of coal and 
timber and the latter is being manufactured 
by the B. R. Thaup sawmill, the product be- 
ing yellow pine lumber. Cauthron ships an- 
nually from 375 to 450 bales of cotton, 3 to 
10 carloads of live stock, 7 to 15 carloads of 



railroad ties and 40 to 50 carloads of pine 
lumber. During 1910 there were in cultiva- 
tion in the immediate vicinity 600 acres in 
corn, 50 in oats, 1,450 in cotton and about 
100 acres in fruit and truck. There are in 
Cauthron three general merchandise stores, 
two drug stores and a public school. Coal 
deposits that should be mined. 

Goaldale, Arkansas 

Population, 150; from Kansas City, Mo., 
348 miles. A coal mining and lumber manu- 
facturing point. The Hiawatha Smokeless 
Coal Co. has a coal mine and the Fogel 
Lumber Co. a sawmill in operation. The 
surplus products shipped from this station 
in 1910 amounted to 1,000 bales of cotton, 
500 head of cattle, 50 head of horses and 
mules, 100 head of hogs and 5,000 railroad 
ties. There are in the town two general 
merchandise stores, a drug store, cotton 
gin and a public school. Coal deposits 
could be mined here and timber for sawmills 
available. 



Hon, Arkansas 



Population, 150; from Kansas City, Mo., 
364 miles. The village has two sawmills, 
manufacturing pine lumber, a cotton gin, 
grist mill, hotel, lodge hall, two churches 
and six general merchandise stores. The 
annual shipments of surplus products 
amount to 600 bales of cotton, about 4,000 to 
5,000 pounds of poultry, 15 to 20 carloads of 
hardwood lumber, 5 to 10 carloads of rail- 
road ties and 40 to 60 carloads of pine 
lumber. 



THE OZARK REGION 



35 



Polk County, Arkansas 



Polk County is the third county south of 
the Arkansas River on the western border 
adjoining Oklahoma, has a population of 17,- 
216 and an area of 868 square miles. Its 
altitude varies from 1,000 to 3,000 feet, the 
surface being rolling, traversed by pic- 
turesque ranges of mountains and several 
large streams. The climate is delightful all 
the year around and public health is excel- 
lent. Nearly all of Polk County was original- 
ly covered with forest, though a very large 
acreage is now in cultivated farms. Yellow 
pine and all kinds of hardwoods are still 
abundant and a large sawmill and wood 
working industry is carried on in several 
parts of the county. The annual output of 
pine lumber will probably amount to three- 
quarters of a million dollars and the output 
of hardwood timber in the form of lumber, 
railroad ties and staves will amount to near- 
ly as much. The timber consists of white 
oak, post oak, red oak, ash, wild cherry, 
walnut and hickory and is suitable for fur- 
niture, berry crates, boxes, handles, hubs, 
and all kinds of buggy and wagon timbers, 
cooperage stock, etc., and is present in suffi- 
cient quantity to supply the needs of manu- 
facturing concerns for years to come. 

The mineral resources of Polk County 
have attracted the attention of prospectors 
and investors for a good many years. Good 



indications of lead, silver, copper, gold and 
antimony have been found in many places 
and have been mined in a desultory manner 
at several points. Antimony and zinc ores 
have been shipped to the smelters occasion- 
ally, but no permanent mining industry has 
as yet been established. Iron ores and 
manganese ores are found in many places 
in the county. Their commercial value has 
not yet been determined. The greatest slate 
deposits in the United States are present in 
this county. It has been definitely deter- 
mined that there is more red slate in Polk 
County than there is black slate in- Penn- 
sylvania and Vermont. There are great de- 
posits of red, green and black slate in the 
county, beginning eight miles east of Mena 
and extending eastward thirty-five miles. 
Three slate companies have extensive quar- 
ries opened and are quarrying and ship- 
ping slate through Mena, Ark., in the form 
of roofing slate, switch boards, wainscotings, 
etc., etc., Novaculites, suitable for abrasives 
and for sharpening fine tools are abundant 
in many places and indications of asphalt, 
coal and oil deposits are present in several 
localities. 

All the streams of Polk County originate 
in the county, which is entirely free from 
stagnant water or mosquitoes. Small ranges 
of mountains cross the county in places. 




STREET SCENE, MBNA, ARK. 



36 



THE OZARK REGION 




SORTING AND PACKING PEACHES. 



but probablj^ three-fourths or more of the 
area is tillable and perhaps half of it is in 
cultivation. The surface soil is composed 
of about equal parts of clay and sand ard 
the subsoil is in general a deep red clay. 
All the new land is not only very fertile, but 
the old land, even after years of cultiva- 
tion is capable of producing great results 
if properly handled. All the field crops of 
Arkansas are successfully grown and very 
few sections of country are so well adapted 
to the profitable raising of horses, mulea, 
cattle, hogs and sheep as is this county. 
The native pasturage is excellent, the water 
of the purest and the best in the United 
States, and forage can be cheaply grown in 
any desired quantity. By reason of its alti- 
tude, Polk County, produces most excellent 
v/inter apples in large quantity and with 
greater certainty than do the sections gener- 
ally credited with superiority in apple pro- 
duction. Being protected by the mountain 
ranges, fruit is seldom injured during the 
winter and peaches will ordinarily yield a 
fine crop when they fail elsewhere. The 



shipments from Polk County will run, in an 
ordinary year, from 5,000 to 15,000 bales of 
cotton, 10 to 30 carloads of apples, 6,000 to 
] 0,000 cases of eggs, 'JO to 150 carloads of 
cattle, 15 to 30 carloads of hogs and con- 
siderable shipments of peaches, cantaloupes, 
strawberries, poultry, etc. As the home 
consumption is large, only a small part of 
the total production is shipped away. 

The City of Mena, Arkansas 

Mena, as a town, owes its origin to the 
construction of the K. C. S. Railway. At 
the time the plat was surveyed the site of 
the town was a wooded plateau, surrounded 
on all sides by a range of high wooded hills. 
On the present townsite were one or two 
small farms occupied by old settlers, but 
the nearest trading village was Dallas, three 
miles east, then the county seat. 

•Since the platting of the town, 1896, the 
following things have been accomplished: 
The U. S. Census of 1910 gives Mena a pop- 
ulation of 3,953; Center township, in which 



THE OZARK REGION 



37 



the town is located, 4,9 G8, and according to 
local count the population in December, 
1911, was 4,500. The town, or rather city, 
now has a group of fine county buildings, 
court house, etc.; one or more churches of 
each denomination, several of stone or brick, 
worthy of being in much larger cities. A 
complete system of public school buildings, 
among them a high school costing $12,000; 
St. Joseph's Academy, a Catholic school, es- 
tablished by the Sisters of Mercy, having 
an enrollment of one hundred and fifty chil- 
dren; a German colony with German 
Lutheran church and school; electric light 
plant, water works, sewers, telephone ex- 
change; thirty miles or more of cement and 
granitoid sidewalks; graded streets, of 
which several miles are macadamized; a 
complete system of low terraces for the res- 
idence streets; a free public library, fire de- 
partment, three banks, business college, one 
of the most beautiful city parks in the state 
and nearly one hundred business houses of 
various kinds. .411 the secret societies are 
represented, and the Order of Elks, and the 
Odd Fellows have halls which would be an 
ornament in a city of 50,000 people. There 
are in operation at Mena two sawmills and 
planing mills, a box and veneering factory, 



a cement, brick and block factory, an ice 
cream factory, an ice plant, brick yard, co- 
operative cannery, two broom factories, etc. 
Mena was for some years a division ter- 
minus of the Kansas City Southern Rail- 
way, but this was not the only reason for its 
rapid growth. Mena has real and substan- 
tial resources within easy reach, and to the 
country around it, the fruit and farm lands, 
the superior climate, the pure, soft cold 
water, the timber and mineral resources and 
transportation facilities, much of its pros- 
perity must be attributed. The division ter- 
minus has moved elsewhere, but population 
and business activity have increased never- 
theless. 

Mena has peculiar climatic conditions. It 
is located in the highest section of the Oz- 
ark Plateau. Its elevation is between 1,.300 
and 1,600 feet within the corporation, the 
variation in altitude giving perfect drain- 
age. Ten miles to the northwest, Mount 
Mena, the highest point not only in Arkan- 
sas, but between the Alleghenies and the 
Rocky Miountains, rears its mighty bulk 2,- 
'946 feet. On three sides of the city are 
mountain ranges, forest clad, rising from 
400 to 1,000 feet high, forming an eternal 
barrier against the blizzards from the north 




IX THE CITY PARK, MENA, ARK. 



38 



THE OZARK REGION 




SOME PUMPKINS, WALDRON, ARK. 



and tempering the climate to almost per- 
fection. Farm work can be carried on for 
twelve months in the year and the growing 
season is from February, when gardening 
usually commences, until the end of No- 
vember. 

The elevation gives the pre-eminence in 
apple culture, not possessed by the country 
further south. Apples in large quantity are 
grown in more northerly latitudes, yet Mena 
and vicinity have hundredsi of profitable ap- 
ple orchards. Mena is practically the south- 
ern limit of commercial apple growing. The 
altitude of Polk County compensates for 
the difference in latitude. Polk County re- 
ceived the first prize for apples, peaches 
and pears at the World's fair in St. Louis, 
Mo. 

Peaches are rapidly coming to the front 
as a money crop and peach orchards are 
numerous. They bear the second j'ear from 
planting, and owing to the clay subsoil, 
wind protection from the mountains and 
good air drainage bear for a generation. 
They are on market from June to Novem- 
ber, with a succession of varieties. Hun- 
dreds of acres of strawberries, blackberries 
and raspberries are now bearing and large 
acreages of small fruits and truck are 
planted annually. Poultry raising adds 
much to the income of the small farmers. 
It should not be forgotten that the country 
round about Mena is the ideal location for 
the general farmer and that corn, wheat, 
oats and other small grain, forage of all 
kinds, cotton and live stock of all kinds are 
produced in large quantity and that general 
farms and live stock, as fine as any in the 



state, can be found here in large numbers. 
In the immediate vicinity are two hundred 
farms on which were cultivated in 1910, 
corn, 1,500 acres; wheat, 100; oats, 200; 
cotton, 500; apples, 200; peaches, 100; straw- 
berries and truck, 100 acres. The surplus pro- 
ducts shipped in an ordinary year run from 2,- 
000 to 6,000 bales of cotton, 3 carloads of can- 
taloupes, 1,000 crates of peaches, 300 to 500 
crates of strawberries, 4,000 to 6,000 pounds 
of poultrj-, 2 to 5 carloads of Irish potatoes, 
1,000 to 2,000 cases of eggs, 10 carloads of 
cattle, 3 of hogs, 5 of hardwood lumber, 200 
of railroad ties, 250 of pine lumber, 20,000 
to 50,000 pounds of hides and furs. Owing 
to the large industrial population in the 
county, the shipments of food products and 
forage are small. 

Nearly all the railroad towns in Polk 
County were surveyed and platted during 
the summer of 1896, sometime before the 
railroad reached them, and actual town 
building did not begin until the spring cf 
1898. Since then the lusty youngsters have 
grown up and kept apace with the settle- 
ment of the surrounding country. The doz- 
en or more small towns away from the rail- 
way have practically held their own, and 
some of them have grown also, but the 
ereater part of the population of the towns 
a^ong the railway is entirely new. 

Wanted: A good family hotel for sum- 
I'ler and winter visitors. Good opening for 
brick and tile manufacturer, furniture fac- 
tory, cheese factory, dairy and creamery, 
wagon works, chair factory. Vast quantities 
of slate to be quarried. Address W. C. B. 
.^llen. General Agent, Mena, Ark. 



THE OZARK REGION 



39 



Gove, Arkansas 

A growing town, 17 miles south of Mena 
and 397 miles south of Kansas City, Mo., 
and only three miles from the Oklahoma 
line. It has a population of 400, one of the 
best public schools of any small town in 
the state, one bank, two hotels, cotton gin, 
gristmill, shingle mill, a planing mill and 
smaller industrial enterprises, meat market, 
livery barns blacksmith and repair shops, a 
newspaper, town hall and a commodious 
lodge building used by several benevolent 
organizations. The gross annual business 
of the town amounts to about $500,000 an- 
nually. It is headquarters for an extensive 
trade in the products of hardwood timber 
and is it estimated that the sum of $150,000 
is paid out annually at this point for rail- 
road ties and staves. 

The town is surrounded by a well settled 
country which produces good crops of grain, 
domestic grasses, clover, and a great variety 
of fruits and vegetables, the acreage in the 
last named products being quite large. The 
marketing of the crops is looked after by 
the Cove Fruit and Truck Growers' Asso- 
ciation. The surplus products shipped from 
Cove annually amount to several hundred 
bales of cotton, 1,000 to 2,000 crates of 
peaches, 1,000 to 1,500 crates of strawber- 
ries, considerable quantities of mixed truck, 
10 to 50 cars of hardwood lumber and rail- 
road ties, 125 to 150 carloads of pine lum- 
ber, etc. 

Wanted: Harness shop, hardware and 



implement store, notion or racket store, 
bank, drug store, flour and feed store, pro- 
duce store, physician, dentist. Good open- 
ings for a cannery, tannery, creamery, fruit 
evaporator, custom sawmill, fruit box fac- 
tory, axe handle factory, cooperage, -luarry. 

Hatfield, Arkansas 

Population, 950; from Kansas City, Mo., 
393 miles; situated in a fine agricultural 
region producing corn, cotton, grain, forage, 
fine fruits and commercial truck. The lat- 
ter are extensively grown and poultry and 
eggs yield a considerable income, but cotton, 
corn, grain and forage are the principal 
crops. The apples grown at Hatfield are of 
exceptional quality and are usually prize 
winners when displayed at the state fairs. 
There are in cultivation in the vicinity of 
Hatfield, 9,000 acres in corn 1,000 in oats, 
5,000 in cotton, 100 in apples, 1,000 in 
peaches, 50 in sorghum, 350 in strawberries, 
200 in commercial truck, 50 in alfalfa, 250 
in broom corn. 

Hatfield has a good school system, several 
churches, about twenty-five mercantile es- 
tablishments, a brick yard, three sawmills, 
planing mill, cotton gin, a bank, a roller 
flour mill and a combination cotton gin and 
grist mill. Indications of lead and zinc 
have been found in the vicinity and coal 
outcroppings likewise occur. None of these 
have, however, been developed. The manu- 
facture of lumber and of hardwood railroad 
ties and staves is the principal industrial 
pursuit. 




PACKING APPLE'S, WALDRON, ARK. 



40 



THE OZARK REGION 




HARVESTING TOMATOES, DB QUEEN, ARK. 



Wanted: Grocery store, hardware store, 
meat market, printing office, barber shop. 

Vandervoort, Arkansas 

This is a growing village of 600 inhabi- 
tants, situated in the southern half of the 
county, and is distant from Kansas City, 
Mo., 402 miles. It has two large planing 
mills, a large three-room school house, three 
churches, two hotels, nine general merchan- 
dise stores, drug store and several minor es- 
tablishments. The country round about 
Vandervoort has been settled for more than 
sixty years, but only during the past twelve 
years has there been any rapid growth in 
population. General farming is the engross- 
ing pursuit of the people and for this the 
country is splendidly adapted. Lying on the 
southern slope of the Ozark Plateau, it is 
protected against the late frosts which se- 
riously injure fruit where this protection 
cannot be had. When the region becomes 
more densely settled, Vandervoort will be- 
come an important shipping point for fine 



fruits, berries, poultry and eggs and live 
stock. 

Wickes, Arkansas 

Wickes is a village of about 300 inhabi- 
tants, in the southern part of the county, 
409 miles south of Kansas City, Mo. It has 
four general merchandise stores, two hotels, 
two drug stores, one exclusive hardware 
store, one confectionery, one lumber yard, 
planing mill, sawmill, cotton gin, grist mill 
and livery barn. It has also a good public 
school and several church organizations. 

The land adjoining the village is gently 
rolling, well watered and not only adapted 
to general fanning purposes, but especially 
adapted to horticulture. The acreage in cul- 
tivation in the immediate vicinity of Wickes, 
consists of 4,000 acres in corn, 150 in oats, 
175 in cotton, 10 in apples, 250 in peaches, 
150 in strawberries, 10 in truck, 10 in al- 
falfa and 150 in forage. The surplus pro- 
ducts shipped from Wickes in an ordinary 
year consist of two to three carloads of 
cantaloupes, 5 to 10 carloads of peaches, 2 
to 3 carloads of strawberries, 7 to 10 car- 



THE OZARK REGION 



41 



loads of cattle, 2 to 5 carloads of sheep and 
hogs, 40 to 50 carloads of railroad ties and 
120 to 150 carloads of pine lumber. The 
famous health resorts, Baker Springs and 
Bogg Springs are reached by way of Wickes, 
Ark. 

Wanted: Meat market, dry goods store, 
bank, tin shop, physician, dentist. Good 
opening for fruit box factory, creamery. 

Granniss, Arkansas 

This town has a population of about 600, 
has an altitude of 922 feet and is south of 
Kansas City, Mo., 413 miles. The industrial 
enterprises of the town consist of two yel- 
low pine sawmills, two gristmills, steam 
laundry, a planing mill, two cotton gins, and 
a fruit cannery and the mercantile lines are 
represented by seven general merchandise 
stores, drug store, two newspapers, and 
two hotels, besides which there are two tel- 
ephone companies, three churches, three 
lodge halls and one public school, a fruit 
growing company and a horticultural asso- 
ciation. 

The soil conditions are very similar to the 
other places in the county, mentioned. The 
land in cultivation in the immediate vicin- 
ity in 1910, amounted to 2,000 acres in corn, 
100 in oats, 2,500 in cotton, 1,000 in peaches, 
150 in strawberries and 350 in forage, etc. 
The annual shipments of surplus products, 
run from 5 to 30 carloads of peaches, 2 to 



6 carloads of strawberries, 5 to 15 carloads 
of cattle. 5 to 10 carloads of hogs, 100 car- 
loads of hardwood lumber, 500 to 900 car- 
loads of railroad ties and 800 carloads of 
pine lumber. Indications of minerals, lead 
and zinc ores, etc., are found in close prox- 
imity to Granniss. 

Hatton, Arkansas 

Population, 184; from Kansas City, Mo., 
404 miles; altitude, 1,186 feet. The village 
has one general merchandise store, a hotel 
and a public school. Hatton is a most beau- 
tiful location for a modern health and pleas- 
ure resort, affording magnificent scenery 
and a great variety of mineral waters, local- 
ly greatly esteemed for their medicinal 
values. The different groups of springs con- 
sist of strong chalybeate waters lithia 
springs, saline springs, alum springs, mag- 
nesia, black and white sulphur springs, all 
within easy reach of the railway station. In 
addition to these there is an abundance of 
the purest, softest freestone water to be 
found anywhere. The famous Bogg Springs 
are five miles west and are reached from 
this point. 

Fine hardwood and pine timber suitable 
for furniture, wagon timbers, pine lumber, 
hardwood flooring or cooperage stock is 
very abundant. The soils in the vicinity are 
splendidly adapted to peach, berry and com- 
mercial truck culture. 




A SPLENDID COUNTRY FOR SHEEP. 



42 



THE OZARK REGION 



Sevier County, Arkansas 



Sevier is the most southerly of the Ozark 
counties along the Kansas City Southern 
Railway. It borders on Oklahoma for 17 
miles and its south boundary is about 20 
miles north of Red River and the Texas 
State line. It lies in the southern foothills 
of the Ozark Plateau and its general slope 
is south and southeast. The north one-third 
is part of the plateau, but from Gillham 
station southward the altitude decreases 
rapidly and from the southern boundary of 
the county an unbroken plain slopes gently 
to the Gulf of Mexico. Protected by wooded 
hills for many miles in every direction, ex- 
cept southward, the county has little to fear 
from either drouth, late frosts or storms. 
The county is well watered and well drained. 
On its east boundary is Saline River and on 
the south boundary Little River. The Cos- 
satott and Rolling Pork Rivers cross the 




PRACHES, DE QUBBN, ARK. 



county from north to south, emptying into 
Little River. Numerous tributaries, fed 
principally by perennial springs, flow into 
all four of these rivers. The area of the 
county is about 600 square miles or 384,000 
acres and about 80 per cent of it will be 
tillable when the standing timber has been 
removed. 

About one-half of the soil in the county is 
red, the color being due to the presence of 
iron, which gives a rich color and flavor to 
peaches and other fruits. Some of the red 
land is gravelly and some is sandy. Both 
kinds have a subsoil of red clay. There are 
two kinds of black land in the county. One 
is a black sandy loam, found principally in 
the river and creek bottoms and which is 
very productive. The other is known as 
black limeland, found mostly in the lower 
Cossatott Valley, in the southeastern part of 
the county. It is especially adapted to the 
cultivation of alfalfa. The climate is one 
of the best found anywhere, is remarkably 
healthful and free from extreme and sud- 
den changes. The Gulf breezes reach this 
country and temper the summer heat, which 
even in the hottest weather, does not reach 
that of some of the northern states. The 
nights are always cool and refreshing sleep 
is assured. 

Agriculture has succeeded lumbering as 
the leading industry. Cotton is grown ex- 
tensively and yields from one-half to one 
bale to the acre, with a total production of 
10,000 to 15,000 bales, valued at $500,000 
to $750,000. The uplands produce about 25 
bushels of corn per acre and the bottom 
lands about 40 bushels. Oats and millet do 
well and are grown extensively; wheat, rye 
and Kaffir corn are grown in smaller quan- 
tities. Sugar cane yields as high as 700 
gallons of syrup per acre; sorghum is grown 
extensively for molasses and also for hay. 
Cowpeas and peanuts produce abundantly 
and timothy, clover and red top do well in 
most parts of the county, though not ex- 
tensively grown. Bermuda grass is excellent 
for lawns, pasturage and hay and Japan 
clover is a volunteer crop. Among the other 
field crops are broom corn and tobacco. Two 
crops of potatoes are grown, the first crop 
maturing about the end of May. They are 
shipped northward in car lots. Tomatoes, 
cantaloupes and commercial truck are 
grown and shipped in large quantity. 



THE OZARK REGION 



43 




CX>RN FIE'L-D, LOCKESBURG, ARK. 



All varieties of peaches do well and some 
of the largest peach orchards in the United 
States are located in this and the adjoining 
counties. The Southern Orchard Planting 
Company's peach orchard between DeQueen 
and Horatio, this county, has over 3,000 
acres in peach trees, all bearing, and there 
are 5,000 to 6,000 acres more at other rail- 
road stations. Early apples do well, plums, 
apricots, cherries, figs, grapes, pears, black- 
berries, strawberries, dewberries, etc., yield 
satisfactory results. 

Stock raising is profitable. Horses and 
mules, cattle and hogs are being raised in 
increasing numbers and the grade is being 
continuously improved. Sheep and goats 
thrive on the uplands. Poultry of all kinds 
do well and increasing attention is being 
given to standard breeds of poultry. 

Most of the large game has been killed 
or driven away, but small game is yet abun- 
dant and the streams are full of fish. 

The great mineral wealth of Sevier Coun- 
ty is as yet undeveloped. In the north third 
of the county near Gillham station are great 
veins of antimony, and in the same vicinity 
also veins of lead and zinc ores. Well de- 
fined quartz veins containing silver and cop- 
per ores in merchantable quantity have been 
found near DeQueen. Iron ore and 
manganese, ores are abundant in the same 
locality. Good artesian wells are flowing in 
several places. Oil and gas are indicated in 
several localities and borings for oil have 
been made in the southeastern part of the 
county, where there is also a deposit of 



asphaltum. Shales and brick clays are 
abundant and in several places there are 
outcroppings of lignites, etc. 

Most of the timber of commercial value 
is pine, but there are also available con- 
siderable quantities of red oak, white oak, 
hickory, cypress, sweet gum, red cedar, syca- 
more, ash and elm. Numerous sawmills and 
planing mills are operating in several parts 
of the county and the output of pine lum- 
ber, hardwood lumber, railroad ties, tele- 
graph poles, cooperage stock, wagon tim- 
bers, shingles, etc., is very large. 

The railway facilities consist of the Kan- 
sas City Southern Railway, which crosses 
the county from north to south with a mile- 
age of 29.88 miles, and the DeQueen and 
Eastern Railway .has a mileage of 21.63 
miles in the county and extends on east- 
ward into Howard County. The county 
reads are good and well bridged. The num- 
ber of school districts is 68 and the school 
population 6,222; the population of the 
county 22,000. 

De Queen, Arkansas 

De Queen was laid out as a town in 1897 
and was made a city of the second class 
and county seat of Sevier County in 1904. 
It is now a modem little up-to-date city of 
attractive homes, substantial brick business 
structures, granitoid walks and graded 
streets, with, the advantages and conven- 
iences found in much larger places. It is 



44 



THE OZARK REGION 



on the main line of the Kansas City South- 
ern Railway, 433 miles south of Kansas City, 
Mo., and 55 miles north of Texarkana, Tex. 
The U. S. Census gives the city a population 
of 2,018 and Bear Creek township, including 
the city, 3,827. The local count based on 
the school census is 3,500. The retail trad- 
ing territory extends about 20 miles north 
and south, 30 miles east and 40 miles west. 
Cotton is hauled here on wagons from 
points 25 to 30 miles away. The Kansas 
City Southern Railway has a division ter- 
minus at this point together with round 
houses, repair shops, etc., and a number of 
employes have their homes here. The De 
Queen & Eastern Railway, in operation for 
a distance of 35 miles eastward, has its be- 
ginning point here and according to reports 
is to be extended eastward and westward. 

The Prairie Oil & Gas Company of Okla- 
homa has an oil pipe line running through 



JDe Queen from the Oklahoma fields to the 
»Gulf and maintains an immense pumping 
fetation at this point. The local manufac- 
Ituring plants consist of three yellow pine 
jsawmills, a large hardwood sawmill, De 
'Queen bakery, steam laundry, ice and elec- 
tric light plant, cold storage, municipal 
waterworks system, cotton gin and a fruit 
cannery. The mercantile lines are repre- 
sented in three solid banks and some twen- 
ty or thirty mercantile establishments. The 
industrial establishments, when in full op- 
eration, employ 1,200 men and have a 
monthly pay roll of over $50,000. 

Nearly all the public buildings and busi- 
ness structures are subsantial brick build- 
ings. Among these are the county court 
house, the shops of the K. C. S. and the De 
Q. & E. Railways, the K. C. S. passenger 
station, the electric light plant, high school, 
Bee opera house, Prairie Oil & Gas Co. 




IN THE ORCHARD OF THE SOUTHERN ORCHARD PLANTING CO., HORATIO, ARK. 



THE OZARK REGION 




YOUNG COTTON FIELD, HORATIO, ARK. 



pumping station, the county jail, ice plant, 
bottling works and nearly all mercantile 
houses. The dwellings are substantial 
frame buildings of modern design. 

Nearly all the streets are graded and the 
sidewalks paved with cement or concrete. 
Free mail delivery, rural telephones, elec- 
tric light service, etc., are not novelties in 
De Queen. The city has six religious con- 
gregations with adequate buildings, an ex- 
cellent school system and a school attend- 
ance of about 1,000. 

De Queen is surrounded and supported by 
an area of splendid valley, fruit, truck and 
general farming lands of unusual produc- 
tiveness. The area in cultivation in the im- 
mediate vicinity in 1910, consisted of 8,000 
acres in corn, 500 in wheat and oats, 4,000 
in cotton, 5,000 in peaches, 500 in truck 
and strawberries, 1,000 in sorghum, 50 in al- 
falfa, 25 in broom corn. Among the surplus 
products shipped from De Queen were 1,073 
bales of cotton, a carload of peaches, 5,000 
pounds of poultry, 12 carloads of cattle, and 
one of hogs, 1,190 carloads of hardwood and 
pine lumber and seven carloads of railroad 
ties. The improvements made in the city 
during 1910-11 are valued at $250,000 to 
$300,000. 

Wanted: First-class hotel building. Good 
openings and plenty of raw material for a 
brick and tile plant, flour and gristmill, can- 
nery, furniture factory, wagon works, chair 



factory, fruit box factory, handle factory, 
any manufacture in wood. 

Gillham, Arkansas 

South of Kansas City, Mo., 421 miles; 
altitude 784 feet, population, U. S. Census 
1910, 291; local count, 400; Mineral town- 
ship, including Gillham, 1,267. Lumbering is 
the principal industrial pursuit of the town's 
population and three sawmills with a joint 
capacity of 37,000 feet are in operation. 
The town is situated in a mineral belt which 
is about seven miles wide and about forty 
miles long, extending from the Saline River 
in the eastern part of Sevier County far 
into Oklahoma, the general direction being 
from northeast to southwest. The minerals 
found in this region are lead, zinc, copper, 
antimony, iron ore and some manganese. 
The ore is found in five or six parallel min- 
eral veins from three to twenty feet wide, 
extending across the northern part of Se- 
vier County. Lead, zinc and antimony ores 
have been mined more or less, but there 
has been no continuous, systematic mining 
as mining is conducted in other mineral re- 
gions. Two partially developed lead and 
zinc properties, the Bellah Mine and the Da- 
vis Mine, have been recently purchased by 
mining experts who have operated in the 
western states and Mexico. They have 
equipped the mines with new machinery and 
have employed a considerable force to op- 
erate them. 



46 



THE OZARK REGION 




PEACH ORCHARD. LOCKESBURG, ARK. 



THE OZARK REGION 



47 



The country in the immediate vicinity of 
Gillham is more or less hilly, but there is 
a large acreage of good tillable land, much 
of it now in cultivation. The annual cotton 
shipments run from 900 to 1,500 bales, in 
addition to which there are shipments of 
peaches, strawberries, poultry and eggs, cat- 
tle and hogs, 200 carloads of pine lumber, 
75 carloads of railroad ties and hardwood 
lumber. 

In Gillham are three general merchandise 
stores with stocks aggregating in value |65,- 
000, two hotels, two churches, a public 
school, a state bank and the Gillham Real 
Estate Co. 

Wanted: Newspaper and printing office. 
Good opening for brick and tile factory, 
fruit and vegetable cannery, fruit evap- 
orator, cooperage plant, box factory, tan- 
nery. Abundant raw material for railroad 
ties, staves, etc. Antimony, lead, zinc and 
iron ores to be mined. 



Horatio, Arkansas 

Horatio is 441 miles south of Kansas City, 
Mo., and 47 miles north of Texarkana, Tex. 
According to the U. S. Census of 1910 there 
were 605 inhabitants in the town and 2,872 
in Clear Creek township. The local esti- 
mate is 1,275. Horatio is^the first town in 
Sevier County to be supplied with rail- 
road facilities. It has been a trading point 
for a large scope of country for many years. 
It has a bank with $50,000 deposits, ten or 
twelve large mercantile establishments and 
handles from 1,500 to 2,000 bales of cotton 
per year. Among its shipments of sur- 
plus products, for 1910 were 500 carloads 
of peaches, 800 crates of cantaloupes, one 
car of strawberries, 2,000 pounds of poul- 
try, 20 carloads of cattle, 2,000 cases of 
eggs, 10 carloads of hogs, 200 carloads of 
hardwood lumber, 325 carloads of railroad 
ties and 500 carloads of pine lumber, car- 
load shipments of Irish potatoes are fre- 
quently made. In town and within a dis- 
tance of two miles are three large saw- 
mills, a shingle mill, gravel washing plant 
and minor industries. 

The largest enterprise at Horatio and the 
largest of its kind in the United States, is 
the great peach orchard of the Southern 
Orchard Planting Company, which contains 
over three thousand acres, all planted to 
Elberta peaches, nearly all of which have 
recently come into bearing. 

Horatio has been growing steadily, in- 
creasing in population, opening up new lines 
of business and gradually replacing its old- 
er buildings with modern brick and stone 
structures. 



The soil and other conditions are similar 
to those at De Queen and Lockesburg, with 
the difference, perhaps, that more land is 
available for new farms right here than at 
other points. The total acreage in culti- 
vation within five miles of Horatio is 20,- 
000 acres, of which 4,100 acres are planted 
to fruits, 3,000 to corn, 1,500 to oats, and 
small grain, 3,000 to cotton, 250 to com- 
mercial truck and 350 acres to hay and for- 
age. 

Wanted: Hardware store, furniture store. 
Good opening for brick yard, cement block 
factory, box factory, furniture factory, wag- 
on shop, cannery. 

Lockesburg, Arkansas 

Situated on the De Queen & Eastern Rail- 
way, 12 miles east of De Queen. Popula- 
tion, U. S. Census 1910, 748; Red Colony 
township, including Lockesburg, 2,276; local 
estimate, 1,100. It is one of the oldest 
towns in Arkansas and until a few years 
ago was the county seat of Sevier County. 
It is a good little business town, depend- 
ing upon the agricultural resources of the 
surrounding country for its prosperity. It 
has a state bank, an excellent high school, 
a graded school, several handsome churches, 
three hotels, three sawmills, three cotton 
gins, three gristmills, some twenty-five or 
more large mercantile stocks, valued at 
about $100,000, and ships from 5,000 to 
6,000 bales of cotton annually. A large 
business is done in the shipping of live 
stock and hard wood timbers in the form 
of railroad ties, barrel staves, fence posts 
and mine timbers. A fine fruit and truck 
growing industry has been developed in the 
last four or five years. Cotton, in the ear- 
lier history of the town, was the only ex- 
port crop, but at the present time peaches, 
potatoes, truck, live stock, etc., are moved 
from Lockesburg in carload lots. 

There is much diversity in the lands sur- 
rounding the town, some being timber lands, 
some uplands, some rich river bottoms 
suited for various purposes. A large acre- 
age is highly improved, while on other lands 
improvements have yet to be made. The 
bottom lands are exceptionally rich corn and 
cotton lands, producing from a bale to a 
bale and a half of cotton or from 40 to 75 
bushels of corn to the acre. Alfalfa and 
other forage crops yield splendidly on these 
lands. The uplands produce from 25 to 40 
bushels of corn and from two-fifths to three- 
fourths of a bale of cotton to the acre. The 
ratio of production of forage, owing to the 
long growing season, is probably a crop and 
a half as compared with a full crop grown 
in the northern states. 



48 THEOZARKREGION 

Homeseeker's Round Trip Tickets 

To points on the K. C. S. Ry., and return, limited to twenty-five days, are on sale 
at very low rates, on the first and third Tuesdays of each month, from points in Illinois, 
Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and Missouri, 
while from points east of Illinois, the rates are slightly higher. 

Stop-overs on round trip homeseeker's tickets to points south of Grandview, Mo., will 
be allowed on both going and return trip. 

For rates, address S. G. Warner, G. P A., Kansas City, Mo. 

Household Goods and Emigrant Movables 

The term "Household Goods and Emigra it Movables" will apply to property of an 
intending settler only, and will include tools and implements of calling (including hand 
and foot power machines, but not including machinery driven by steam, electricity, 
gas, gasoline, compressed air or water, other than agricultural implements); second- 
hand store fixtures of merchants; second-hand vehicles (not including self-propelled 
vehicles, hearses, and similar vehicles); live stock, not to exceed ten (10) head (sub- 
ject to declared valuations and premium charges); trees and shrubbery; lumber and 
shingles; fence posts; one portable house; seeds for planting purposes; feed for live 
stock while in transit, and household goods, but does not include general merchandise, 
nor any articles which are intended for sale or speculation. Shipments of emigrant 
movables must contain a suflacient quantity of furniture to make the intention of a 
permanent residence at destination evident. 

Information about freight rates can be obtained by addressing R. R. Mitchell, General 
Freight Agent, Kansas City, Mo. 

Printed Information 

concerning the country along its line is published by the Kansas City Southern Rail- 
way Company for the use of people in search of new locations for health, pleasure or 
business and seekers after information are cordially invited to apply for such publica- 
tions as the K. C. S. Quarterly Magazine, "Current Events," "Gulf Coast Book," "North- 
west Louisiana" and "Eastern Oklahoma," which will be sent free on application to 

WILLIAM NICHOLSON 
Immigration Agent Kansas City, Mo. 




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